Remember sitting outside under a tree on a hot summer day, listening to the chirping of the bugs and songs of the birds while a light breeze ruffled the leaves ever-so-slightly above you? The bark against your back, the grass tickling your feet as you tossed back a cold bottle of Nehi Grape soda and pretended to be an adult by “smoking” the sugary treat of candy cigarettes?
Those days are long gone. Sitting in the grass is dangerous — you never know where the ticks are. Nehi soda is pretty hard to find, and candy cigarettes are so gauche that now they are called candy sticks.
It’s tough to bring back that childhood feeling, when a game of jacks might be followed by tossing aloft your balsa wood airplane to watch it catch on a breeze and soar. Or holstering your play gun as you park your imaginary horse to test your battle skills with little green Army men.
The other day, we were in the Buffalo area for a medical appointment when we decided to check out Vidler’s 5&10 in East Aurora. As soon as we stepped inside, and onto the creaky wooden floor, we knew we were onto something good.
We came in through the kitchen section, where hard-to-find tools were available for a look-see. But that wasn’t all. Four buildings, two floors, nostalgia everywhere.
Upstairs was the section for toys and candy, along with all kinds of other things in neatly filled rooms. I never got a chance to look at the section filled with soda (or pop, take your pick) but the website shows Grape Nehi.
And so much more.
There were stuffies, but instead of whimsical critters, they featured real wildlife from all over the world — there’s more than giraffes and elephants. One might find a Highland cow calf, a Beta fish, an adorable (and unscented) skunk, a coiled black snake, and all kinds of songbirds. And other things — paper dolls, models, wooden pop guns, kaleidoscopes, tops, Jack-in-the-boxes, board games, jacks, balsa wood planes and so much more.
I can remember back when I was a child, my older brother worked at Wasson’s Garage in Rixford, Pa. There was a pop bottle machine there, the kind that after you put in the money, a door would open and you could pull out a bottle from the long, metal dispenser. An older man who worked there taught my younger brother and I that if we grabbed two bottles and synchronized when we pulled them out, we could get two for the price of one.
Drinking that cold, “we pulled one over on you” bottle of whatever pop we happened to grab was a magical memory.
And just down the road a bit in Rixford was a little store that we always called Bacha’s. That may have been in the name, or just part of the “country” way of referring to something. That I can’t remember, but I do remember the penny candy and gum he had in the store. “You remember,” my sisters would say of the store, “it was right at the top of Tin Can Alley.”
Umm, where? I think it was called Depot Street.
That’s the type of nostalgia I’m talking about. And lucky for us, a visit to Vidler’s made us feel that again, that escaped high from being young and virtually carefree.
It wasn’t hard to find, it has a great big parking lot out back, and the staff we dealt with was kind, courteous and respectful.
Definitely a trip back in time, even without a DeLorean, Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox.
(Marcie Schellhammer is a reporter and editor for the Bradford Publishing Co. group that includes the Olean Times Herald. She can be reached at marcie@bradfordera.com)
