Do you guys remember these REALLY COOL "New Monster Rings" from the 60s/70s?

[BijouBob8mm]

Is the drugstore/soda shop still there?

Yes but "Mousie," the guy who owned it for so many years, passed away a few years back.  A guy I'd gone to school with and his wife later got hold of the place and turned it into an ice cream shop, but the building was in need of repair and they're currently closed down.  That place is burned into my brain.  There were the racks of paperbacks and comics, and a display of magazines where I'd always be on the lookout for the latest issues of Famous Monsters, Castle of Frankenstein and The Monster Times.  (Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella helped while waiting for new monster mags to arrive.)  Those old sun-drenched wooden floorboards would creak beneath my feet as I'd walk back to the magazine rack.  This was a little town in the Midwest, and a truck would deliver the new magazines and comics every Thursday morning, just before the place opened.  In the summers, when school was out, if I got there right at opening Mousie would let me look through the bundles before he put the new stuff out on the rack.  (Sometimes he might only get three copies of the latest FM, which wasn't enough to go around, even if we were a small town.)

As a teen, Mousie was my source for a new magazine called Starlog, as well as the place I bought (and had processed) cartridges of Super 8 film for my monster movie-making endeavors in the Seventies.  Not long before Mousie's health forced him to close up shop, I went back to my old hometown and dropped by the drugstore one afternoon and had a cup of coffee with him and we talked about how much things had changed over the years.  (This guy's memory was amazing--he remembered all of us kids!)  For the time I was there that last visit I was his only customer.  On my way out, my jaw dropped.  Behind the cash register counter, on the little side shelf where the movie film and splicing tape was kept in the pre-video days, there were a few packs of splicing tape and some empty film reels and cans still there with their old price tags on them!  I turned back to Mousie, still behind the soda counter, and told him I'd take what film supplies he had left.  Even if I wasn't still playing around with the camera and projector, I think I would have bought them anyway...just to have been able to do it one last time.

[Paladin]

Yes, I certainly do remember them. When I went into the service my collection "disappeared" :/

[Hepcat]

Yes but "Mousie," the guy who owned it for so many years, passed away a few years back.

Very sad. I love old-fashioned drugstore soda fountains.

[Paladin]

These soda fountains were very cool. We had two in our area way back in the day. They both closed up around 1975 or so.

[BijouBob8mm]

Can't recall if our local soda fountain/drugstore closed just before or just after the millennium.  Somewhere in there.  There is, about a half hour from there, yet another small town where the old fountain is still thriving.  And if anyone in the Dayton/Fairborn, Ohio area is familiar with Foy's, there is not only an old fountain still there (in addition to the magic shop and horror museum and other genre attractions), but an old school main street diner.  (A lot of cool shops to browse through.)  That area really comes alive during the Halloween season.  (Horror host Dr. Creep was a staple there for many years.)

http://www.foyshalloweenstore.com/

[Hepcat]

There is, about a half hour from there, yet another small town where the old fountain is still thriving.

Foy's or a different one?

[BijouBob8mm]

Foy's is roughly an hour away from me, in Ohio.  I'm in Indiana.  The other soda shop I was thinking of is in Farmland, Indiana.  It's currently called The Chocolate Moose.

[Hepcat]

I was actually thinking of old fashioned soda fountains that are part and parcel of drugstores as opposed to free standing soda fountains/ice cream parlours.

[BijouBob8mm]

That's what Mousie's was.  The Moose started out that way (although I forget what its original name was) but I'm not sure about its status today...other than it's still open for business.

[Vandor Zorkov]

Foy's is not more than 1/2 hour away from me. Been there a few times but have spent more time visiting the comic shop (LOTS of statues) and a bookstore across the street. Nice little town, Fairborn.

[BijouBob8mm]

They also have a vintage car show down there, as well.  I love that area.  I have to be wary of the comic book shop...those statues you mention are a little too tempting!

[Hepcat]

Foy's is not more than 1/2 hour away from me.

Is the soda fountain in Foy's part of a drugstore?

[Vandor Zorkov]

It's been a few years since I was in there but if it's the shop I'm recalling (there are several crammed in that block), the inside is EXTREMELY cluttered but now that you mention it, it could be what's left of counterspace. I'll check next time I'm down that way, perhaps this weekend.

As to the place in Farmland, my wife and I used to live in Muncie so we know that one, too. Nice place though I don't recall a fountain.

[BijouBob8mm]

Sounds like we've got similar stomping grounds Vandor!

[Vandor Zorkov]

We sure do. Fairborn has a neat Catholic thrift store (St. Francis') where all kinds of oddities show up, plus on the far east side of Springfield, on the interstate, is allegedly the biggest under-one-roof antique mall in the midwest. As much as I dislike Ohio in general, these are some of the things that keep the area enjoyable. I'm more a collector of old safety razors and they're always turning up in this area, more so than other areas of the country, I'm told. Horror items? Not so much, unfortunately.