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Old Ads

Posted 06.23.06 at 11:40 AM

Send yourself back in memory or imagination to March 2, 1943.

After a hard day’s work, you’re resting at home and reading The Paris News before commencing your night time activities. It was a hard, hectic, heartbreaking, but nevertheless exciting time in Paris, Texas. We’d barely had over a year of “war” with a lot more to come. With Camp Maxey on our doorstep, living quarters for service people were especially hard to find.

I’ve heard it said that anyone who had an extra room rented it out. One of my favorite sentimental wartime movies, “Since You Went Away,” features a wartime wife who had to rent a room in her home to make ends meet. Of course, her renter turned out to be a gruff but lovable retired colonel pressed back into service to free a younger officer for overseas duty.

My favorite ad: TWO ROOMS, furnished. Lights and gas. $30.00 per month, bills paid.

Here are some more:

» FIRST Sgt., wife and 3 children, school age, would like furnished or unfurnished apartment or house. Call First Sgt. Craven, Camp Maxey - 441.

» OFFICER and wife want furnished apartment or house. Phone 1850-J.

And people had to work:

» WANTED: Soldier’s wife for general housework and care for child. Phone 42-M between 6 and 8 p.m.

» WANTED: Man past draft age for night clerk local hotel.

The old Palace Drug Store downtown wanted “Girls for booth and fountain work.” Who remembers the old Palace Drug? The soda fountain, the booths, the narrow merchandise-clogged aisles?

The Paris News urged folks to “Plant a Victory Garden.” A large ad said “Start today to sow the seeds of defeat in your Victory Garden.” (Actually, that could be read two ways, if you weren’t an experienced gardener.)

Nance Bus Lines advertised the Camp Maxey Bus Station located one block north of the First National Bank. “Leaves at 4 a.m. every 20 minutes ‘til 8 a.m. Every 30 min. ‘til 4:30 p.m. Every 5 min. ‘til midnight. All day Sat. and Sun., every 5 and 10 min.”

I recently learned you can’t even catch a bus to anywhere out of Paris now when I carried a traveller down on his luck to what I thought was still the bus station. We couldn’t take him to Broken Bow, his destination, and Bob Bush, who was with us, told him he’d have to “use his thumb.” We used to say “shank’s mare.”

There were lots of beauty shop ads: “oil permanents” were $2.50 to $12.50 at Ruth Howell’s Beauty Shoppe, and “Gaberline waves” were $3.50 up at Addie Nicholson. I’d like to know what a “Gaberline wave” was.

Firewood went for $3 a rick, $3.50 if delivered. At Dingman’s Café at 60 S. Wall St., a lunch with a drink was only 25 cents. Dead horses, mules and cows were carted off to Paris Soap Works for free.

If you want to take a trip to yesteryear, come out to the Paris Junior College Library and look at The Paris News microfilm. You can see what was “happenin’” in the year of your choice. I enjoy the old ads and dream of the good old days when we made fewer dollars, but the dollars seemed to go further.

If you remember the wartime years in Paris, let us hear from you. Post your memories on our site.

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