Look at this deck of playing cards. The cards are like new, but they aren’t!
Two local businesses are advertised on the other side of the box.
Check out the telephone number for Rose’s Rexall Drug Store: it’s 39! Yup, 39 is the entire phone number. Of course, this was when you picked up the phone and a female operator said, “Number, please.” In a small town, you might even know the operator. “Hello Mabel, get me the drug store, please … I think their number is 39.” How old is this deck of cards?
I remember going to this drug store when I was about 5 years old. I remember it because the front door had an “electric eye” that opened the door and let you in. A cylindrical stainless steel post contained a light behind a convex lens, looking very much like an eye; another stainless steel post contained a photocell. When you broke the beam of light, the door opened. It was the first automatic door opener I had ever encountered and probably the only one in the city. I thought it was the coolest thing ever (though that particular usage of the word “cool” had yet to be adopted by the nascent Beat generation, and hippies were still a decade away).
If you turn the pack around by 180° you can read the ad for another business.
Their phone number was 575, a whole digit longer – obviously the telephone business was booming. I wonder who got “666”?
It seems strange that both businesses are drug stores. Why would either business want their competitor’s ad placed alongside their own ad?
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