Tom Osborne September 24, 2015 at 9:41 pm
I remember Yuen Yung started out being just a small take-out place with maybe three tables–we’d get food from there all the time. Then they expanded into a large restaurant, taking over what had once been a movie theater (does anyone remember the name of that theater?).
Hearing these names was making me think of the kids I knew whose parents owned these places. I took an accounting class with the son of the family that owned Yuen Yung, and then he took over running the restaurant. Somebody mentioned Congdon & Crome, which was a stationery story, right? Sally Congdon, their daughter, was in my class at Menlo-Atherton (and I think also at Encinal Elementary School). Remember when Mustangs (the car) first came out–what year was that, 1965, maybe? The son of the Swenson’s who owned the ice cream shop, my age, got a Mustang, the first one I ever saw (his father collected Rolls Royces). There was a grocery store over near Ad James Swim School (I think somewhere near there), I don’t remember the name of it, but the son of the man who owned it, Joey Moreing, was also in my class. Oh, and there was Fletcher’s furniture store on Santa Cruz Avenue, and, again, the son, somebody Fletcher, was in my class. I suppose I could go on and mention that Stevie Nicks was in my class at M-A. and I was on the swim team with Lindsey Buckingham, one year younger. Dick Roth, ultimately a gold-medal winning swimmer in the Olympics, was also on that team. That guy would do about twenty laps of the M-A swimming pool while I was completing one of them!
Foster’s Freeze was the huge hang-out, but the family went there, too. No matter where we went out to eat, we always would skip desert and get dime cones at Foster’s Freeze, except when we’d go to Edy’s instead. I remember for a brief time that there was a trampoline place across the street from Foster’s Freeze, with in-ground trampolines. That was great fun, but then they went out business, so my parents bought one of the trampolines and had it put into the ground at our house. Next to Fosters Freeze, Johnny’s Smoke Shop, that was where we’re get cigar boxes for pinning in insects for our science class insect collections. (We were not allowed to go in the back to look at the magazines.)
Gale’s Coffee shop was our family’sstandard ritualized “Christmas Eve” dinner restaurant. I can’t think how many meals had at Ken’s House of Pancakes. Another restaurant we as a family frequented a lot of Stickney’s Hik’ry House at Town & Country Village in Palo Alto. Does anyone remember the amusem*nt park that used to be there right near the underpass? For many years, that was my birthday party place. My two sisters and my brother all were born in the summer, so their birthday parties were always pool parties (diving for pennies!), but since I was a winter baby, we got to have my parties at that amusem*nt park. I loved the cars you drive yourself…or at least it FELT like you could drive them yourself.
Oh, what was the name of that place where you could go fishing? Kind of out near Woodside, maybe? Starts with a “S” I think. Searsville Lake, by golly, that was it.
I remember one of the hottest dates I ever had was taking my girlfriend to see the movie, “Romeo and Juliet” (the one with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey) and there was a storm raging outside and it seemed that the roof of the Menlo Theater would fly right off. Everything felt all cozy and very intimate. My girlfriend reached her hand between the buttons of my shirt and began to rub the bare skin of my chest and stomach–whoa for the young man that I was at that time, that was very heavy and extremely exciting.
My mother loved landscaping our property and for years we spent countless Saturday hours at Roger Reynold’s nursery. She’d always bring me along to push the cart so that she could grab potted plant after potted plant. As we’d walk along and she’d expertly scope out the exact tree or bush she wanted, I would get mesmerized by the light/dark flickers from the wooden slats overhead, like it was a stroboscope.
Somebody here mentioned the discount store Alec, but there was also Maximart, but I forget exactly where that was…Palo Alto or Mountain View, maybe. I was in JSA (Junior Statesmen of America) at M-A and made friends with a girl from Woodside who was also in it; we’d get together at the Fall and Spring States (state-wide conventions). Her parents owned Maximart, but then both her parents were killed in their private plane (they flew into a mountain) so she moved away to lived with a relative. I wish I could think of her name, she was a wonderful girl and suffered a horrible tragedy. Linda Mittleman, I think that was it.
There was a tropical fish place at Town & Country Village; my parents had a huge aquarium and they were always restocking it with fish. I don’t remember the name of the store, but the owner’s name was something like “Cogie”. He watched all of us grow up and for quite a long time kept abreast of all of doings until each of us eventually moved away from the Bay Area.
The freedom we had in those days! Every once in a while on a Saturday, my mother would put some money in my shirt pocket and say that I needed to get a haircut, to ride my bike up to the barber shop on El Camino Real and afterwards she said, there would a good movie playing at the movie theater next door (The Guild Theater, perhaps?) that I should go see. All by myself, I would ride my bike, get my haircut, and then go see movies like South Pacific, Lawrence of Arabia, andWest Side Story. What kid could do stuff like that, now?
In our family, we weren’t allowed to read comic books, but guess what, that barber shop had a whole mess of them so while I waited for my turn in the barber chair, I was catching up on Batman, Superboy, Silver Surfer, and the like. When my brother was old enough to be able to come with me, we each would catch up on the comics while the other was getting his haircut. Well, I guess worse than that was my best friend always had the latest Playboy. His father sold advertising for Playboy and several other magazines, so he had subscriptions on tap.
Okay, I feel like I’ve run off at the mouth enough, now (unless I think of some other things later!), but this think back to the past was very fun. And it all started with that music store, now very important that was to me back then. Buying those 45 rpm records was so precious, and then getting entire 33 1/3 long playing albums…I’d have a wish list a mile long and I loved it when my father would stop in there around Christmas time, because he would always get me some great music that I was dying to have. And to think that little kids nowadays don’t even know what a cassette is. In fact, I think they don’t even quite know what a CD is, even. My how times have change, but I wouldn’t trade away my childhood for anything in the world.
