I received the first official memory of Wagners days from my good friend Norm (the one who had to make the long journey from fairway park to reach Wagners). I hope more of you will share your memories. Here is his what he sent me:
I remember the dust covered house hold gadgets that hung above the cooler and behind the penny candy. Sockets, screws, fuses...
They may have hardly ever been needed, but by golly, Wagner's sold them just in case. Mrs. Wagner got pissed off at me once when she over heard me say to someone that this stuff is covered with dust and never gets sold.
Also, there was a moment in all the neighborhood kid's life when the big realization came into being...that is that Wagners simply turned their living room into a store!!!! As a kid, your thinking...how great is that!!! Living in a house with all those goodies!!!
Yeah, those were the days. You would wait all week in anticipation of getting your "allowance". All 12 cents! And then make the arduous trek (it was an expedition for those of us from Fairway Park) the whole way to Wagners. 12 cents...and you had choices! Should I spend it all on penny candy and get a whole 12 pieces! Or should I get a 12 ounce soda? I could, if I drank it there, get the soda for 10 cents and spend the other two on penny candy. Or maybe buy two bags of Stehmans chips for 5 cents each! And still have two cents left over. Ahhhh Stehmans. You bit into the chip and the fine "juices" of grease would coat your tongue. Sometimes, if you were lucky, when the chip was made during the frying process, it created a bubble. Inside that bubble was a reservoir of grease. You would bite into it and the "dam burst"! Delicious!
I sill buy a bag when I am in Lancaster at Subs and Suds.
I could not find a photo of Stehmans Chips so I made do with the venerable Charles Chips we all remember from our youth (the big metal Charles Chips cans that, once empty, our moms would save and use for various other things such as storing their home-baked Christmas cookies). Apparently the Stehmans Chips Norm recalls were made in Ephrata, PA and no longer exist. But Stehmans Chips are still made in Mohnton, PA.
Thanks to monkeytime at Flickr for the use of the photo
Wagner's had three (3) levels of balsa-wood airplanes. For a nickel you got a glider, good for mounting explosives. For 15 cents you got a rubber-band driven propeller on a slightly larger plane. And the big one, 25 cents, had wheels. We mostly used the gliders, and I still have one of those tucked into a desk drawer (though this one came from Rebman's).
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