THE DALLAS POST — THUR igar Store Indians Are Have you ever wondered what has become of all those brass hand bells? The butcher, baker, milkman and candlestick maker rang them when you were a kid! Maybe you have forgotten the butcher wagons that travelled from house to house, revealing sausages and choice cuts of meat on wooden racks—when the straw-cuffed butcher opened the rear door; but you can’t have forgotten the piece of bologna he gave you and his clanging butcher’s bell. The milkman had one, too, to summon housewives to fill their tin milk pails from the big cans in his cart. There was also the stern brass bell that the rural teacher clanged to call pu- pils from the schoolyard. It was an age of bells—school bells, church bells, farm bells, court house bells and fire bells. They were everywhere! Those brass clarions now sell at a premium if you are fortunate enough to find one at a country auction or on an, antique dealer’s dusty shelves! But the bells are gone, along with other familiar figures of that generation — - the cigar store Indians, the familiar trademark of every substantial tobacco store. Stolid and foreboding they stood, justoutsidethe door, tomahawk in one hand —a clutch of cigars in the other. They were symbols of a generation growing up with America — like the brass and copper weathervanes that wheeled on the cupolas of prosperous farmer’s barns throughout New England and the Pennsylvania Dutch Country — marvel- lous creations of Yankee ingenuity! di SL emer te cas a a ES
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers