Hello all, I hope everybody is enjoying the summer. There are a lot of things we used to do in the summertime here in Murfreesboro. I thought we’d go down memory lane this month and look at some of those places we used to frequent.
As a kid growing up, if you got to have your birthday party at Dipper Dan, located in Jackson Heights Plaza, it was a big deal. First of all, they had the coolest ice cream—it had bubblegum in it. I loved it.
If it was your birthday, you got your picture made in the back room with your friends. Everybody sat on this display looking like the answer board of The $10,000 Pyramid word game show. The honoree got to sit at the top. And, when you left, you could get little plastic, glove-like puppets with the Dipper Dan logo.
A lot of people don’t know that Murfreesboro used to have a Playland in the basement of Jackson Heights Plaza. Here, one might play putt-putt golf or ride the little musical Ferris wheel. Playland also had a miniature train you could ride on, you could bowl, and they also had a few arcade games.
Playland was really cool and, for some reason, just being in the basement of Jackson Heights was cool in itself.
As we became teenagers, that meant we got to cross over into adulthood—at least that’s what I thought, because I had a driver’s license at 16 and that meant I got to start driving vehicles. I thought I had arrived when I got to drive my own car. I felt like I was an adult; it made me more mobile, at least.
What did we do in Murfreesboro in the ’80s? Well, many of us cruised around to places like the Clark’s parking lot, located on Memorial Boulevard (where Murfreesboro Nissan is today) and to Jackson Heights Plaza, just to name a couple of locations.
Sometimes we would go to movies at the Martin Twin in Jackson Heights Plaza. We also had the Marbro Drive-In, located on Northwest Broad Street just past the railroad tracks.
My family had a 1948 De Soto, and my buddies would pile into the trunk to sneak in. When they rolled out of the trunk, it looked like a bunch of clowns at the Shriners circus.
Speaking of circuses, from time to time the fair or carnival would come through town. Sometimes it would set up at Jackson Heights Plaza, sometimes at the Clark’s parking lot or at Rose’s Department Store on Mercury Boulevard (now MLK).
A lot of folks don’t know that the Murfreesboro Country Club was on the same property where Indian Hills is today. After the country club closed, the site became the Starlite Drive-In. After that it was Fox Run, a nine-hole golf course, and then, Indian Hills opened, as we know it today.
In the 1930s, if you were staying at the James K. Polk Hotel downtown, one of the things they promoted was being able to play golf for free at the Murfreesboro Country Club on South Church Street. I used to think that Stones River Country Club was the first and only country club here, but no, the Murfreesboro Country Club predates it.
The original Murfreesboro Golf and Country Club opened circa 1921, while the city’s current premier private facility, the Stones River Country Club, was established in 1946.
Well, there you have a little snapshot of what folks could do for summertime entertainment back in the day.
I hope everyone has a safe and fun 4th of July celebrating our nation’s 250th birthday. Remember to go out and do something nice for someone else. God bless you all!
