Letters: Thanks for the memories

Dear Editor,

Re: “Photo: Do you remember Budget Appliances in Steveston?,” News, June 17 and “Photo and video: Do you remember the Sexsmith Bus Loop snack bar?,” News, May 4.

Thanks for the story about the Sexsmith bus loop. I hadn’t thought of that place in 60 years. In 1956, when I was six years old, every Saturday I’d take a series of buses into Vancouver for music lessons.

Bus 1) The stop was a short walk from our home at 630 (now 6300) Granville Avenue to Sexsmith Loop for a transfer. (I believe they served great Tater Tots at the snack bar);

Bus 2) Sexsmth Loop to transfer again in Marpole;

Bus 3) Up Granville Street to West Broadway and transfer at Arbutus;

Bus 4) South on Arbutus to a one hour music lesson;

Four buses back home to Granville Avenue. Round trip bus cost was 50 cents.

Even though I was only six, this wasn’t considered an especially dangerous trip for a child. I always sat just behind the driver and don’t remember ever feeling uncomfortable.

My parents paid $8,000 for our 2,500 square-foot house.  My father could have purchased the one-acre lot at the corner of No. 3 Road and Granville Avenue for $12 a month through a government scheme for returning WW2 soldiers.

My father considered it a good investment, my mother said that acre was only good for cows and blueberries.

The ditches were uncovered, there were no sidewalks or street lights and we all believed that Richmond was just an unstable peat bog that would sink into the Fraser River sometime soon. 

I used to pick the blueberries. The most I ever earned in a day was $4.10. The owner was a Baptist preacher who made us sit through sermons during lunch. Of course, I blew all my summer earnings at the PNE when it opened.  

Peter S.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIFORNIA