Today’s Thoughts… “A Little Town Called, Walters” When I was a little boy, we would always walk or ride our bikes into a little town called, Walters. It was about three miles from where I lived and grew up in my younger years. It used to be a busy little place with four or five stores. It had a post office inside one of the old country stores with the old wooden barrels and a round of cheese that you bought by the pound or half pound. The grocery items were mostly behind the counter and you simply told the clerk, who was always the owner or members of his family, what you needed and they would get it for you. I can remember when the items were up high, they would use this gadget that had tongs on it with a lever and they would reach for the item, squeeze the lever and the gadget would wrap itself around a can of beans and pull it down. Soft drinks were always in a glass bottle; you just lifted the lid to the coke box, reached in and pulled out your drink, then opened it on the box. There was no such thing as plastic or twist off caps back in those days. Lance crackers were in glass jars and cookies for a penny were the highlight of paying a visit to any of the stores there. Flour, was bought by the pound, but sometimes it would come in cloth sacks that would eventfully be made into dresses for my sisters. Walters even had a train depot; I thought that was the coolest thing to watch the train come through. I even got to ride that train one time with my mother as we made our way to Suffolk. Long before my time, it even had a bank but the bank had closed some years before I came along. In fact, my grandparents used to live in the bank, I thought that was the coolest thing; it still had the teller cages that were behind bars with a little slot to handle the money. When nightfall would come around, all the local farmers would gather at one of the stores, sit outside on benches, drink their little, six, ounce cokes and discuss how their crops were doing. This was the routine, night after night. Walters used to be a busy, bustling little town, a town where everyone knew everyone and to be truthful, everyone knew everyone’s business. I have found in life, that all little towns are quite alike, but what makes them so unique, is not the stores or the side walks, but it’s the people who live in town and in the surrounding areas. The people make it what it is, and it’s the people that I remember most. Time has come and time has gone, now Walters still has a few people living there, some of the old houses have been torn down and new ones have replaced them with a new generation of kids that have grown up. The stores have vanished in time, they could not compete with the larger super markets that had come along with the changing tide. The train depot closed long before the town really dried up as automobiles replaced a way of transportation. Even though now I ride through and there really is not much to see, all I have to do is pull into one of the empty parking lots, close my eyes, and my memories carry me back into time, a time when Walters had plenty of hustle bustle, a time when most anything you needed could be purchased there. Now I only have my memories and my stories of Walters to pass on to my children and grandchildren, for it was a part of my life that I never want to fade away into time. I so wish all the future generations could experience what a little town like Walters was all about. Patrick P. 5/31/2014
Posted on: Sat, 31 May 2014 12:09:55 +0000
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