otherwise they look pretty much the same as they did forty some years ago.

The Alameda Shopping center was the closest to my house. My brother and I, and

our friends, would walk to the drug store there for snowballs, baseball cards,

and comics. They also had a Western Auto car parts store in the shopping center

that smelled of new car tires, and boasted a great selection of bicycle

accessories. The other stores in there, like the A & P grocery store and

Epstein's Clothing, were for parents only. We avoided them.

The Medical Center was a little bit farther to walk, but we'd go there for the

pharmacy's malted milk shakes. They also had a Jimmy Wu's Chinese carry-out. My

father would buy chicken chow-mien from there a lot, but our gang would go there

for their french fries smothered in ketchup.

I don't know how we got hooked on this particular American snack at a Chinese

carry out, but we did. The Chinese waiter, behind the counter, absolutely

dreaded to see us coming. If he was observant enough to see us from a distance,

he would switch the open sign to closed, lock the door, and hide behind the

counter.

He hated to serve us french fries. I'm not sure why, perhaps they had

an egg roll quota or something. Sometimes, as we entered the shop, he would

simply yell "NO FWENCH FWIE! NO FWENCH FWIE!" at the top of his lungs. But we

knew he had them back there, and would simply wait him out until he got tired of

us being in his store and threw some in the deep fat fryer.

The Northwood Shopping Center was the farthest of the walks, a little over a

mile away. This was a full sized shopping center with a Hecht Co. department

store at one end and a grocery store at the other. In between was a Read's drug

store, an Arundel soda fountain, a movie theater, and a couple of small clothing

stores.

The Arundel soda fountain was our main source for the dreaded ammonia cokes that

I mentioned in the soda fountains page. I think we ordered them because we

thought the combination of ammonia and coca cola would get us high. It didn't.

For some reason, it just made us pee a lot.

Unlike the fwench fwies man, they women behind the counter loved serving us

ammonia cokes (they never ran out of ammonia), and would snicker amongst

themselves as they did so.

We didn't really hang out in front of any of the stores. Another gang had laid

claim to a prime spot in front of Read's and, back then, it was polite to not

encroach on someone else's hangout.

If you would visit those shopping centers today, you'd find many different

stores on display. Jimmy Wu's, and the fwench fwie man, is long gone, as is The

Arundel with its ammonia cokes. Read's, and even the Hecht Co. is gone also,

their soda fountains with them.