Saturday Night Live

I'm guessing you can tell someone's age by what they think of when they hear 'Saturday Night Live'. Old ones are going to think of the good old days when Saturday night meant going to town; young ones will think of the tv show.
Saturday was the one evening a week that chores were done early. We HAD to get to town early so we could get a good parking spot along main street. Which meant we left home around 5:00 p.m. because we had to stop at the produce station to sell our cream and eggs before we drove up and down Davis Avenue looking for the most likely place to park. Seems like the preference was for the west side between 6th & 7th streets. On that side was Biggar's Dept. Store, the Dime Store, a shoe store, a women's dress & hat shop, a couple cafes and crossing 6th a grocery store.
Two distinct memories involving that stretch of sidewalk come to mind both involving my little sister. We were going to go into Gentle's Cafe but Betty (age 5) wanted to go on down the street to Daisy's Cafe for some reason. She started crying and screaming "I want to go to Daisy's"! Mom could not get her to shut up any other way so we went to Daisy's.
We were walking down that same sidewalk a few years later when Betty was hit from behind by a kid riding his bicycle down the sidewalk. It knocked her down skinned her knees and arms and hurt her leg. We were near Daisy's so Mom took her in there to clean the wounds. I don't remember if we even knew who the kid on the bicycle was, but I always think of it as being one of the Smart boys. There were four of them. They were always terrorizing other kids; real brats. There was some speculation a few years later when Betty had to have hip surgery that it might have been because of the bicycle accident.
Once their shopping was done, people stood around or sat in their cars (or on the fenders) and 'visited'. Mom rarely let us girls out of her sight but one night she allowed us to walk up and down with a girl we had just gotten acquainted with. We were supposed to only go up to the drugstore but as soon as we were safely out of sight, this 'town girl' led us on a merry chase. She knew the ins and outs of every store. She tooks us clear up to the third floor of Turner's where back in the back she knew there was a restroom. We had never been beyond the second floor before. We had been gone so long Mom began looking for us. She gave us such a bawling out and told us we could never have anything to do with Kathy Penn again. (Turns out Kathy and I were in the same h.s. class years later and got into mischief together more than once!)
The stores all stayed open until 10:00 p.m. There would be a last minute run at the grocery store to pick up the sacks with our name on them setting along the front wall. We would pull up outside and the grocery boys would bring out our bags. Sometimes Dad would go in and buy a half gallon of ice cream to eat as we watched 'Saturday Night Wrestling' when we got home.
Saturday nights in town were ruined sometime in the 60's when the city fathers decided to make Thursday night the night they stayed open late. It just wasn't the same. Saturday night live became Saturday night no longer.