Hello everybody! I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving and all your football teams won. Now, on to Christmas. As a kid growing up here in Murfreesboro in the 1970s, Christmastime was a special time. You could hear Christmas music up on the Square coming out of the speakers at the courthouse. Another big thing was when the city employees would put up Christmas decorations, with lights leading up to and all around the Square.

Growing up, the Square, to me, was Murfreesboro. This is where most people shopped, especially at Christmastime.

One of my favorite stores was Brown’s Shoe Store, which had a basement. I remember a slide from the main floor down to the basement where the sales clerk would slide shoes down for you to try on. I also remember their golden goose display, which had something to do with shoes.

You could buy your grandmother clothes at Ruby’s. Both of my grandmothers loved Ruby’s. If Ruby’s wasn’t your place, then you just walked down to Goldstein’s. They had an escalator. I’m pretty sure this was the swanky place to shop on the Square.

There was a J.C. Penney at the corner of College and Maple. You entered through the doors on College Street and then went down a few steps to the main floor. The manager’s office was upstairs and had some windows so they could keep an eye out for shoplifters, I guess.

Now, if you were really in the giving mood and wanted to give your loved one jewelry, there were several places to choose from. First, you could go to Mullins Jewelers.

If that did not work for you, you could go across the way to Bell Jewelers. There was also Aultman’s Jewelers. This is where I had my first charge account and Mrs. Bean always helped me out.

Before my time there was Cecil Elrod’s French Shoppe.

There was Mr. Arbit’s store, The Hub. The Hub had these wolf mannequins on the second floor window, and they used to scare the crap out of me as a kid!

If you needed something from the hardware store, we had Haynes Hardware and Holden Hardware. This is where we got our keys made. And when it snowed, these were the places you would get your cool sleds. But the key to that would be that it had to snow, which it didn’t always do.

These are just some of the places where I remember shopping during Christmastime on the Square. The Square was the meeting place for the community, way before Hickory Hollow, Stones River Mall, area outlet malls and other modern shopping centers. Folks went to the Square to shop for just about anything. Personally, this is what I miss about Murfreesboro.

Here’s a glimpse at a few more shoppes from the past:

We’ve gotten pretty darn big, but look on the sunny side: it’s best to be progressive and have problems dealing with growth, if only all of the traffic could be fixed. But that problem did not happen overnight, and it’s not gonna be fixed overnight.

So there’s my two cents on the old days of Christmas shopping on the Murfreesboro Public Square. I hope everybody has a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Remember to go out and do something nice for somebody.