The old leather belt

 

Ahhh... the old leather belt. The one that served through many years in my career job and through all the years of raising four wonderful children with my wife and lifetime partner. The belt that was my favorite for some 25 years or so. It recently wore out from buckling it too many times and almost broke in half at one of the holes. I tucked it away thinking that after a while I would eventually decide to part with it.

Then one day I discovered a new product called Gorilla Glue! The glue that can hold most anything together. Almost as popular as Duct tape!

I applied some Gorilla Glue to the leather along the tear and clamped it to dry overnight. The next day I checked back to see if the glue had worked it's magic, and surely enough the belt was in good enough shape to occasionally use again. It hangs proudly once again on my clothes rack next to the new one I purchased when I thought this one was gone for good.

Yes, it does get to be worn again from time to time and will eventually become one of the items I pass on to my family.

The old drugstore telephone booth

The old telephone booth in the back of the downtown corner drugstore was among the favorite places of many young students on their daily after school adventures. There were no cell phones in the 1950-60 era so the phone booth served as a primary communications spot for teenagers. The booth always had a line of customers waiting to deposit their dimes and quarters after school and at night and the pressure was on for anyone that tied up the phone for a longer than their allotted time as they took their turn on the small wooden seat in the tight fitting booth. Sadly, the old booth disappeared in recent years when cell phones became the ever present means to keep in touch and pay-phones became a losing business for the telephone companies.

The daily after school ritual usually for many local students consisted of a walk or ride to downtown (depending on whether you had a car or had or had a buddy with one), rushing into the corner drugstore and ordering your favorite drink or milkshake with a grilled cheese sandwich and then spending some much anticipated "quality time" with all the friends you already saw at school all day.

Those days have faded into the past along with the old telephone booth. The drugstore has been renovated and turned into a favorite local pizza-pasta restaurant always crowded with a mixture of adults and families. The teen crowd has moved on and some now return to the former after school spot for their favorite pizzas and new friends found along the way...