This is the photo from a full page ad for Burton's Book Store. In the ad, they'd like you to know they've been around since 1878, that they have "something new every day" and that they are located on East Magnolia and South College Streets.

And if you're in a town this size and don't know where they sell textbooks odds are you haven't been studying a lot have you? Maybe now'd be a good time to stop looking at the pictures of the girls.

That kindly elderly lady in the center of the picture? She'd like you to stop gawking at the girls and buy some books, please, before some of these things topple and land on her employees' heads. That's a lot of paperwork, even in the 1950s; and all those carbon copies, dreadful.

That's all the ad says, the sort of brief and to the point text that makes the heart flutter. By now you know all about the wall o' books anyways.

Here's a 1916 picture with Burton's in the background. Burton's, among other things, published this postcard. The back had a key for all the buildings in the letters, beautifully done.

Burton's closed in the 1950s. Weary from a 70-plus year run, the place gave way to upstart J&M bookstore, which has now been a fixture in town for 55 years as of this writing.

Love those light fixtures.

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