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Downtown on a Monday night

Once upon a time, before Meijer’s, before Wal Mart, even before Kmart there was the Black & White Grocery, Tony & Norms menswear, Pickett’s pharmacy, Doctor Burkholder, and Vaughn’s department store.

Adam’s bookstore was there, the Lyric theatre, the Dallas cafe, and Doyle’s Standard Service. Michley’s shoes and Alpena Sporting Goods were there as well. A&P, Deschamps, Alpena Printing Studio, Thomas News Agency, Montgomery Ward, Townsend Coal – all these businesses were downtown.

All the doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, engineers, insurance agents and banks were there. The bars and churches were there too as were the car dealers: Doyle/McCoy, Garrison, Reichstein, LeBlanc Oldsmobile – all were downtown.

The retail businesses were open every weekday until 5:30 p.m. and a half day on Saturdays. Only one night a week – Monday nights – did they stay open until 9:00 p.m. You had to be able to plan ahead back in those days.

On Monday nights onto the stage of downtown Alpena would enter a full cast of our community’s characters with middle class shoppers playing leading roles. Producers, directors, bit players, understudies, and crew were scattered about the production.

Always, there was spectacle downtown on a Monday night.

Into this diverse assemblage would wheeze a 1949 Pontiac Chieftain automobile filled with teenaged boys. I say wheezed because that was the sound it’s homemade muffler made during deceleration – a state that occupied approximately 45% of the old Pontiac’s time. Another 45% was spent in acceleration – the sound then was a high pitched whine. Only about 10% of its time did the Pontiac move at a steady pace.

Not only did the old car have its unique sounds, it had a chromed indian chief ornament on its hood

But the most unique thing about the old Pontiac was not its sound or its chromed chief – it was the bell. Under the old car’s formidable hood a bell was mounted on its engine block. It was a very fine bell with a heavy gauge wire running from its clapper to and through the firewall into the car’s interior. No fancy electrical switch here.

When the old Pontiac would wheeze to a stop at a downtown traffic signal on a Monday night all of us would strike a practiced pose of cool indifference projecting a “Who? What? Us?” attitude to the crowds of shoppers moving on the sidewalks and past us in the crosswalk.

Then one of us would pull the wire that rang the bell.

Some harried lady running late, burdened with too many packages and herding her children before her would stop – straining to determine where that sound was coming from and what it portended. Others would follow her lead. Soon everyone on the adjacent sidewalk and in the crosswalk would be paused, listening – puzzled.

Then, as abruptly as it started, the ringing would end – just in time to preserve our innocence. The pedestrian traffic would resume its movement; life’s normal flow would be restored; the light would change and – once again – a whine would be heard followed by a wheeze and the ringing of a bell.

It was a unique downtown Alpena shopping experience.

Why did the ringing of that bell provide our teenage senses with such grand entertainment? I’m afraid to attempt an analysis. I’m not at all sure that in today’s world my probable conclusions would be understood; our lack of “sophistication” well received.

But I know this: I’d love to pull that wire again; I’d love to hear the old Pontiac’s bell ring one more time.Doug Pugh’s Vignettes run bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached via email at pughda@gmail.com.

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