An item in the Looking Back column of The Gazette mentioned a letter from a farmer who complained that he had to walk long distances to his car as the Main section was filled with cars in which residents of the town sat Saturday nights to watch the passing crowd. How well we older folk recall this. Many town residents would drive downtown in late afternoon, park their cars, walk home and have supper and then back to the cars. The passing scene until midnight was not of little interest.

It was really something to see Picton on a Saturday night in those days. It was the main shopping day of the week, just about everyone came in. It was much like a family reunion as groups stood in clusters on the sidewalks and visited forgetting that passersby might want to get to their destination. The baby carriages and strollers were also an impediment to others, but there was not much grumbling as it was like one big family. But it was no fun when you had to carry groceries and such long distances to a car parked on back streets. The groceries and butcher shops were located downtown then.

In those days, the Regent Theatre was operating with two shows a night, 7 pm and 9 pm, and a lot of people would shop early in the evening and go to the show, leaving their purchases in the stores to be picked up after [they] got out after 11 pm. So the stores had to stay open and it would be midnight or after before the staffs could clean up and go home.

Today, we are all hustle and bustle and tend to wear ourselves out, forgetting the leisurely pace of earlier years and the meeting of old and new friends. What do we use the time ‘saved’ for, even with shopping, parking or driving our cars? Could it be that we could do with a more leisurely pace?