A twin Popsicle or a postcard for radio programs
By Dorothy Stanaitis
The kids on Ogden Street knew the value of a penny.
Three would buy a twin Popsicle at Jake’s Candy Store, in our West Philly neighborhood. Two got us a small paper bag of very stale candy. One bought three sour balls or two Mary Janes — if we could resist the red wax lips we could wear for a while before chewing them like gum. Should it be gum we really wanted, a vending machine dispensed a tiny box of two Chiclets for a penny.
We seldom had as many as 10 pennies, but when a doting grandparent or visiting uncle would give us a dime, we could buy a tall frosty ice cream soda at the long marble counter at Herman’s Drug Store.
The penny postcard
A penny postcard yielded a variety of results. A grandmother or aunt might write back, promising a visit, enclosing maybe a coin or two wrapped in tissue paper. If you sent a penny postcard to Uncle WIP, who had a daily 15-minute kiddie show on radio station WIP, he’d announce your birthday over the air, making you an instant celebrity on the James Rhodes School playground.
But the most profitable use of a penny postcard may have been sending it to Let’s Visit the Zoo, a radio program featuring facts about the animals in the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens. At the end of each program, the Zoo’s curator, Roger Conant, posed five questions about the information just presented. Five correct answers on your penny postcard, and he’d send two free passes to visit the Zoo in person.
Not bad for one cent.
For the Saturday movie matinee, you needed 10 cents for admission and five cents for a very large candy bar, which — if slowly nibbled — could last through Coming Attractions, Movietone News and the cartoon.
Crisis at the movies
One Saturday afternoon during World War II, Ogden Street moviegoers were caught unaware by an increase in the admission price to 12 cents, to make room for a two-cent “war tax.” Covering the unexpected expense required giving up part of your candy money or, in some cases, pooling pennies so that candy bars could be bought for sharing. After a few lobby disputes over how the treats were to be divided, it was time to enjoy the latest adventure of Tarzan. When President Roosevelt appeared in a newsreel, the theater filled with deafening cheers and loud foot stomping — not much clapping, because our hands were filled with candy. It would be years before FDR’s face appeared on a dime, but then again, it would be years before the Ogden Street kids had dimes of their own.
Pennies were the currency of our childhood — loved, appreciated, collected, saved, spent carefully on our hearts’ desires. Perhaps it is in honor of those days that so many of us still keep jars or boxes filled with pennies.
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