In the ’50s a Margate kid could have a great time for a just few cents
By Seth Briliant
I grew up in Margate during the 1950s. It was a great time and place to be a kid.
We lived on Kenyon Avenue, across the street from the Blessed Sacrament Church and School. With its one large, windowless brick wall, the school was a perfect place to play wallball.
The church held a fund-raising carnival each summer on the huge, empty lot at the corner of Jerome and Ventnor avenues (currently the location of a larger church building). The entire lot was ringed with strings of electric lights, creating a festive atmosphere. Simple things like half a lemon with a short straw stuck in the middle, were a special treat for me.
There was a small strip of stores nearby that were important to neighborhood children. At the corner of Kenyon and Ventnor avenues was Portner’s Bakery, which made amazing gingerbread men with hard, royal icing decorations, and lots of spicy ginger.
Nextdoor was Bowen’s Variety Store, which had a huge selection of comic books, as well as a soda fountain – a real double whammy! In addition to getting the latest Superman, Fantastic Four, Batman and Little Lulu comics, you could buy an ice-cream cone for just 10 cents. If you were adventurous, you could get a second scoop on top of that for another nickel.
Next to Bowen’s was the Kenyon Pharmacy, a drugstore with the usual prescriptions and over-the-counter nostrums. It was also the place to get your film developed. You just dropped off your roll of film, waited about a week, and then went back to pick up your prints and the negatives. At the time it seemed convenient and almost magical. How times have changed.
A small, two-room building was located at 5 North Jerome Ave., across from the Blessed Sacrament Church. It was the Margate Public Library. I was a frequent visitor there and enjoyed reading the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I especially liked “The Gold Bug,” a captivating mystery about a secret code with directions for a treasure.
The Margate Theater, at Douglas and Ventnor avenues, was a small and cozy place for Saturday afternoon matinees with the latest Westerns and sci-fi movies for kids. It also had a vending machine that dispensed a bag of warm, but slightly stale popcorn for the princely sum of 10 cents, enough to last through at least the first half of the picture. And after the movie there was always Stewart’s, a great walk-up food stand located across the street which served delicious root beer sodas, hot dogs and hamburgers.
On the same side of the street was the AAA Bike Store, another important place for kids. We always seemed to need help fixing a flat tire, mounting a new tire, repairing a bent handlebar or replacing a broken chain – and this was the place to get it done.
The Margate 5&10 at Frontenac and Ventnor avenues, was likely an unlicensed Woolworth knockoff, but it was stuffed to the rafters with all sorts of wonderful things. If you couldn’t find what you needed there, you probably weren’t going to find it anywhere else.
There was a Dairy Queen at Madison and Ventnor avenues, which is still there today. On a warm Sunday evening in the summertime, our family would go there and enjoy something called “soft serve.” It wasn’t quite ice cream, and it wasn’t frozen custard either, but it was still delicious. Even more delicious was getting my soft-serve cone dipped in melted chocolate, which became a hard-chocolate crust.
At Decatur Avenue and the beach was something even more unusual – the Elephant Hotel, a giant wooden elephant that you could walk through. For 10 cents (everything seemed to cost 10 cents in those days), you could climb a set of spiral stairs in the elephant’s rear leg. That led you to the elephant’s belly and eventually, to the howdah viewing platform on her back, where you could see all of Margate and much of Longport as well. That view was well worth my dime anytime!
Seth is a retired attorney who lives in Egg Harbor Township. He still enjoys eating gingerbread men and soft-serve ice cream, just not quite as often.
