Sleepy Town

Sundays weren't only a "sleepy" day for our family, it was a "sleepy" time for the town as well. Even the gas station stopped pumping gas on Sunday. Every store was closed. The drug store was closed, but Mr. Pitt was available (he was the pharmacist) if there were an emergency. Ditto with the town doctors. If you ran out of food, you went hungry. Sunday shutdown was a lesson for all in planning.

The only thing open was a small restaurant that was located between Dinks and the corner store at the Pike and Clements Bridge. I do know that when Dinks expanded, he bought out the restaurant which made his store twice as large -- which isn't saying much.

The restaurant, of which I remember only one dinner to which I was invited, was very small, but the food was good, or so the adults thought. Fresh baked bread. Fresh vegetables (not canned). Fresh-baked pies. This restaurant was probably 15 feet wide by 30 feet long at best, including the kitchen. It seated people in booths on the left hand side as you walked in (or was it the right-hand side?) and there were maybe three or four other tables with chairs against the other wall, which weren't used often because it made the facility too crowded. Only the "overflow crowd" sat at the tables. And I might note that back then there were no fire codes that limited the number of people per square foot.

I do recall that the windows had 1/3 curtains -- red gingham (large squares) -- on the lower portion of the window box. I also recall that the life of that small restaurant was short-lived after I started remembering things. It could have been a Runnemede "fixture" for years before I arrived in town.

But back to "sleepy town." I think it was very nice that the noice, hustle, and bustle of daily life shut down on Sunday. It was a day when only needs were supplied -- no wants. You had to schedule your wants to six days per week. It was a day when you could hear a bird sing because there was little traffic. You noticed the wind rustling the leaves in the trees. You watched the bees flitting from flower to flower then off to their home. You watched ants make homes in the cracks in the sidewalks. It was truly a day of leisure, except of course for church time.

There were, of course, Sunday drives -- a subject of another BLOG, but while they were popular, not many people did that every Sunday. No, Sunday was truly a day of rest and relaxation. Rest, as I told you meant a Sunday afternoon nap. A tradition I still adhere to, religiously.