Sadly, I remember almost all of them. LOL

yes, I do!!

And a lot of them are still around!

Oh, we LOVED sticking our hands in the coke cooler on hot summer days!

I remember having a stick horse like that (so did my best friend.) We spent many days "riding the range" in our imaginations.

The store reminds me of the "pony keg" down the road - the local name for a convenience type store that predated gas station minimarts. I remember that type of cooler, where you had to put in your nickel before it would release a bottle.

There's nothing better on a hot summer day than a cold drink from one of those old machines. You would slide a glass bottle of your favorite drink along a track until it reached the end where you could lift it out, When you popped the top off your drink, it would be so cold ice crystals would form in it. I remember going to my uncle's store and him saying, " get yourself a pop and a candy bar". Not healthy, but we didn't care about such things then, as a kids, we just thought it was great .

We grew up with guns in holsters as we rode the range, on stick horses, imaginary horses, or bicycle horses (with saddle bags over the rear fender, of course). None of us grew up to be murderers, thank goodness. Must have been the soda pop that kept us on the straight and narrow.

That's a great photo, Lars!

Woodrose, I think the difference (re soda and candy) was back then they were truly treats, not an everyday, expected part of the diet for most children. They were for some I suppose - I remember my father, a dentist, lamenting the tooth rot that he saw in some children that he blamed partly on their consumption of soda and sugar( and partly on lack of toothbrushing and decent diet in general.

That was what made Halloween, Christmas and Easter so special for kids - we didn't get candy routinely in between those holidays.

When I was a kid, the father of the five kids who lived next door worked at a Coca Cola plant. He'd bring home cases of Coke, and every Friday when he came home from work was "Coke" day. They had a cooler like the one in the picture out on their covered patio, and all the neighbor kids came over to have a Coke. Funny, I'd forgotten about that until I saw that picture.