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hess's downtown
imogen
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Feb 8, 2007
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the hess's department store in downtown allentown may have been demolished, but it is alive as ever in my memory & imagination.
the thrill of back-to-school shopping, riding the elevator up & down the floors, the lighted hallway towards the chocolate/candy department, the spiral parking deck & remembering what letter we were on...
& the best part of course was waiting in line to eat at the patio! shopping works up quite an appetite & sometimes it felt like you waited forever in that line! i could wander nearby to look at the "multiples" clothing display while my mother & grandmother held our place in the line. eventually you made it up to the part of the line where the velvet ropes were & soon the dessert case was in view! i always got the famous strawberry pie, except for the heart-breaking days when it was all gone! (though sometimes a new pie would appear half-way through our meal.)
the rainbow "patio sugar" colored my tea with milk pink, the adults menus were huge & blue, the lobster tail from the kids menu came out of an oven, the waitress my grandmother knew very well would sit down right next to us & ask us how we were doing. her uniform & all the pieces of the place settings said "hess's hess's hess's hess's hess's hess's" a million times over.
then the models came walking around, passing right by your table! it was so exciting to see the grown-up women's clothing on sale at the store & to think that 1 day i could buy clothes like that or even be a model. before long, my slice of strawberry pie arrived in a mini-refrigerator. even though i couldn't finish my dinner i always had room for dessert.
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