Okay! Let me set the stage here. Imagine walking into a store. It's a fairly large building and as soon as you enter it's doors, there are long tables loaded with merchandise. Everything from toys, records, toiletries, towels, bedding, small tools, auto parts and pottery to candy, snacks and bags of peanuts. And the best part is...the items on these long tables are all priced at 5 and 10 cents each. At the side wall is a long lunch counter and in the back of the store are the slightly higher priced items. But it's the 5 and 10c tables that you came in for. That was the old five and ten stores.

I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Akron, Ohio. We had several five and dime stores in the city. Scott's was down town and there was a smaller one at Temple Square. And of course, we had Woolworth's.

The five and dimes were one of my favorite stores as a kid. I always had money but not much of it. So the five and dime was the perfect place to spend what I did have. You could buy just about anything there. Toys, model kits, hardware, wallpaper, candy, clothing, lamps, greeting cards, magazines, books, tools, kitchenware, household items, rugs, drapes, some auto supplies, picture frames, phonograph records in .45s and LPs, dishes and silverware, you name it, and they had it.

Some of the stores even had soda fountains and lunch counters. They sold sandwiches and drinks and also had meals. A grilled cheese sandwich and fries were ten cents. A milk shake was fifteen cents. A roast beef dinner was seventy five cents complete with a drink. You have to remember, at the time, the standard paycheck was around $45 to $55 a week. But the five and dime stores helped a lot of people make it through the week. Today these stores are compared to the Dollar Tree and the Dollar General stores.

The five and dimes could be large stores such as those of F.W. Woolworth. But many were small, simple stores with wooden floors and the merchandise laid out on long tables. My favorite was the five and dime at Temple Square in Akron. It was fairly large and was a simple layout. It was in our neighborhood and easy to walk to. I loved going through the trash cans out back as there were many items in there that may have been damaged and the store tossed out.

The candy counters were a ton of fun. You could buy standard candy bars, bubble gum, candy necklaces, jelly beans and those little wax "pop bottles" with the juice inside. Plus a ton of other candies. At the time, Taffy was the most popular.