There once was an old gas station/bus stop/taxi service building, to the left of that first building of the downtown. You see, John Dudley worked there when he was 1
5-16, pumping gas, carrying groceries, sweeping, washing & greasing cars...basically he was Scooba's Gomer. John earned$10 a day, at the Tom Hill Service Station, at Johnson & Railroad St. (See the intersection on Google Maps)
That first building..the blue one use to be the bank.
2nd building was Bob Knight's grocery..his wife kept john from being drafted to vietnam...she was over the Selective Service Board.
The 3rd building was Frost Drugstore. John use to have to go there a lot for his boss Mr. Tom Hill cause he smoked a lot and they'd load him up with some kinda strong
cough syrup they made there.The next place was owned by a local body builder (that was rare...nobody picked up any weights around there back then, except maybe a bale of hay)...it was some kind of clothing store.
Right past there was Shaff's Grocery.
This was where John's grandmother and mother and daddy shopped. That's where John would meet up with his grandmother when he was 9-10 and she'd give him a dime to spend. He'd also get a dime from his Uncle Fussy, his daddy, Aunt Bonnie amd any other family he might run into while in town....Ada Lee Shaff (Daughter-lives in Hsv now)
footnote: if john collected enough dimes he'd go down the alley at the back of the stores between the stores and the pulpwood yard and meet up with Little Lonnie, Bad Eye and Junebug and they'd buy some Twister Sweet Cigars or some Brown Mule chewing tobacco and they'd smoke and chew in the pulp wood yard.
The building on the very end was the picture show. John's uncle Alvin Rosenbaulm owned it...he was a Jew that married John's daddy's sister. John says you could go to the movie for 15 cents and a bag of popcorn and a coke was a nickel each...so for 25 cents you could go to the movies...they always started with a cartoon followed by a seriel of Lashly Rue; Whip Wilson;
or Wyatt Eyrp. The movie would be something like Roy Rogers & Dale Evans...ALWAYS black & white...John says the only colored they saw was upstairs...sittin in the balcony on wooden benches that were really too high for your backside. He said that instead of slantin the floor up there the benches were short on the front row and gradually got taller toward the back. LoL!
Downstairs in the VIP...there was a slanted concrete floor and the seats were like old timey desk seats that were strung together and would flip up...the theatre leaked some and the first three rows was usually underwater so you had to sit toward the back...there'd also be some mosquitos in there and since they hadnt come out with OFF spray...folks would spray themselves with DDT.
The white 'church'...well that's where the Klu Klux Klan meets. (note the painted upper windows)..
