This is the one I'm most familiar with it had a good shade break (concrete bench & table) to sit under on the way to the Beach Store. It started out with out of state phone books & a concrete table but over time they both disappeared. A good place to spend Sunday being the whole town shut down & it was on the loop Chris Gourmet Castle & a spin around the pier. It had everything a mooching teenager could ask for even a stop light so your victims couldn't escape you bumming a ride at the stop light. I think the Beach Store would open around 11 or 12 in the morning on Sundays?
This picture looks to be from the 70's by the looks of the cars and the fact that it had become United Telephone by then. Those benches under the building were a popular gathering spot for many of the people that worked in the various offices and businesses downtown. There almost always seemed to be a gathering of people there having a smoke break.
ReplyDeleteThe phone company employees loved to go out and sit there just to get outside. The building had very few windows in it so they would get stir crazy after a while.
My grandparents owned Schneider's Apartments off of 8th Street in Naples. We lived in Brookside Village. I remember a bowling alley near there too. I also went to Naples Junior and Senior High School from 1962 through 1967 before we moved to California.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog! Thanks for sharing all these wonderful pictures and memories. Keep it going!
Small Town Blues. My mom was a long distance operator at the phone company. One night after she had grounded me for stealing fish out of the freezers on the dock by the Cove Inn, I tried to call my grandparents in New Jersey to see if I could move there. Mom was the only operator working that night and blocked every collect call.
ReplyDeleteWe grew up in old Naples in the early 60's and still live in Naples. My mom worked for the phone company then. We spent our afternoons either at Rexall drug store, or the Beach store on 3rd st.Our sat afternoons were spent fishing for red fish off the city docks and hunting for quail and deer off goodlette rd.We used to fire up the air boats we had in the back yard on Sundays and never a complaint.
ReplyDeleteThose were the days.
I worked as a phone operator there in the late 60's. Worked some really crazy shifts. We used to have contests to see who could get the most calls going at one time. The long distance pay phone calls were most challenging. We were trained to know the difference in the sound of a quarter versus a dime or a nickel....but it wasn't easy. There were monitors who walked up and down and if you looked like you were having fun they would plug into your conversation to eavsdrop. What a trip. I ran off to California- spur of the moment and that's when I quit!
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