Forney had an “All-Supplying” central downtown area?

I can barely remember being a very young boy in the early 1950s and “going to town” with, most of the time, Mom, and some of the time, Dad. There were so many stores and windows though which to view merchants’ products. There were a post office, two banks, a café, a dry goods store, a shoe repair store, a television/radio repair store, two or three grocery stores, a furniture store, a “ringer” washateria—You Get the Idea! There were trees in front of many buildings, and the main streets seemed really wide. I had to hold the hand of at least one of my parents when we crossed the street, but we did not always use the corner areas! My favorite place to visit was the barber shop at the corner by the railroad. Man, it was loud when the trains came through, and there were great magazines to “thumb through,” while sitting in the two long, “wooden-slatted barber pews,”…… but, every once-in-awhile, Dad would take one out of my hand if the photo of the lady in the Field and Stream or Sports Afield showed too much of her legs! And when I got my burr haircuts, Mr. Daniel and/or Mr. Carpenter would put Roy Rogers hair oil out of a really big shaker bottle onto my scalp and Dale Evans powder out of a can and dust it all along my neck using a wooden-handled soft-bristled brush! And, if Dad and I were the final customers, one of the men might even pump the handle up and down and give me a “ride to the top” in the chair! Those were the good ol’ days, when Dad paid for both hair cuts and usually got change back from the two dollars he pulled from his well-worn black billfold, and a soda cost a nickel, if you finished and left the bottle!

Dad came to Forney in 1947, fresh out of THE WAR and ready to become a part of the “beginning” Southland Athletic Mfg. Co. He had no car at first (war shortages) and “boarded” in different houses that had spare rooms. Usually the owner was a “widow lady” who needed extra money. I liked to listen to him talk to the “old geezers” in the barbershop about the “good ol’ days” when he had first moved to Forney, and “George and ‘Verdie’ Mae” considered him their adopted child and fed him well at their café in reing fresh farm produce to them when he visited his “folks” back in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. I didn’t tell Mom all the things I heard in the barbershop!

So, let’s take a look back at a JACK-RABBIT ANNUAL (yearbook for you young guys) and see what businesses advertised in 1945—1946 in the Forney area, and especially in the downtown part, just a little before my Father settled down here.