Before malls, in the 1940’s and 50’s, I remember walking around downtown Macon on Cherry Street with my parents. They called it window shopping. The newest everything was in the shop windows for all to see. There was no TV, no Amazon and window shopping was the only way to learn about new things to buy, things we probably didn’t need any more then, than half of what we buy on line now. We usually ate at Len Berg’s in the alley or S&S Cafeteria’s on Cherry Street. There was a pleasant, ambience to all of it. Of course if it was too hot, too cold, or raining, the trip was put off for another day.
I love enclosed malls! Macon had Westgate, the first one in Georgia in 1961. It was 50’s modern and looked to us then like a Star Wars set does today. I was 18 then. I had a friend, Buddy Harrel, Laura’s son, who liked to go out there and walk around to just “enjoy the ambience”. When he said it the first time, it was for some reason the funniest thing any of us had ever heard……