The honor of the first advertisement went to the city of Auburn, who was glad you stayed and spent your parents' money for four years, now would you kindly move on and make some room for the class of 1956?

The city's ad was a full page, just a small handful of text and most of that dedicated to listing the city's leadership, just in case you needed the information.

There were two photographs, taken from within inches of one another. Here is the first, the ever familiar intersection at Toomer's Corner, where city meets university. On the left you can see the shade from the fabled oak trees (the ones we roll) in the early afternoon. To the far right is Toomer's, across the way is Pitts Hotel, which I've never heard of before until scanning this image.

The local airport is named after Robert Pitts, so there might be some correlation. On the same side of the street was Grady Loftins $.05 and $.10 Store. Down the way was Markle's Drug Store. There were five drug stores all within spitting distance of one another at the time. Toomer's survived the longest, as a drug store and is the only surving business name of that bunch.

That link shows a great interior picture of Markle's, and brings me just a bit closer to buying Professors Logue and Simms' book.

See that shadowy white thing in the right foreground? That's a big chunk of marble with a historic marker embedded in it marking the exact center of the city. It still rests in that spot today.

Previous | Next | Glomerata Index | Home