Trolley ride in 1930s took shoppers to stores in Ephrata, Lancaster [I Know a Story column]

I was born in 1928. When I was a little girl, my family lived in Ephrata at Good's Crossing. The trolley stop was next to our driveway and would come by our house hourly. If we wanted to ride, we stood by the tracks.

When my younger brother was around 5 years old and I was 9, we picked strawberries to earn money. This was when we started our independent trolley adventures. For 7 cents of our hard-earned money, we could ride the trolley to downtown Ephrata.

In the 1930s, Ephrata was a thriving town with lots of different stores: Whities, a newspaper stand, sold greeting cards, writing paper and newspapers; Abe Cohen's, a men's store, sold suits, shoes and clothing for men; and Seldomridge's, a clothing and home goods store, purchased clothing in New York City. I liked to go in there and look at their dresses, even though I couldn't afford to purchase anything.

There were two banks in Ephrata and three drug stores. Ephrata also had two department stores: Harris' Department Store and Spritzler's Department Store. At the end of the season, Mr. Spritzler would take the clothing inventory that didn't sell and give it to my older brother to donate to the Mennonite Central Committee. There was a JCPenney store, a Woolworth's five-and-dime, a bridal shop that sold fancy dresses, Haines Shoe Store, Sprecher's Hardware Store, a movie theater and a bowling alley. There were no shopping malls, so people came to Ephrata to shop. In the evening, Ephrata was crowded with shoppers.

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My mother grew up in downtown Ephrata; she was a "town girl." She enjoyed going to Lancaster to window shop and to buy her "coverings" (Mennonite headdress). For 25 cents each, my mother and I would ride the trolley to Lancaster. We would ride through the countryside: The first stop was Akron, then through the fields we would ride to Brownstown, Leola and then along Marietta Avenue to Lancaster city. If people were standing along the tracks, the trolley would stop to pick them up.

In Lancaster, the trolley stopped at the Square, which hasn't really changed much. On the corner was Watt & Shand Department Store. This would be our first stop on our day out shopping. We would look at things that were too expensive for us to purchase. We would have lunch, soup or a sandwich at the Rendezvous restaurant on the lower level.

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Our next stop was Hager's Department Store. On the second floor was a room which was like a separate store. Here they sold "Plain clothing," and they called it The Plain Store. The saleslady wore a cape dress and a covering. They sold Plain men's suits, men's black shoes, women's plain cape dresses, women's black shoes, black stockings, coverings and bonnets. If a man didn't find a suit he liked in The Plain Store, he could pick one from the regular men's section and the Hager's tailor would convert it to a "Plain suit." This is where my mother purchased her coverings and Plain, comfortable black shoes with laces and a 2-inch heel.

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After shopping at Hager's, we would go to Woolworth's department store on Queen Street. This was one of Woolworth's first stores, which opened in 1879. My mother would always purchase a bag of cashew nuts here for us to eat on our trolley ride home.

On Sundays, we could buy a trolley day pass for 50 cents and travel anywhere in Lancaster County.

The trolley was a big part of our life in the 1930s.

The author, age 96, lives at Garden Spot Village in New Holland. Her daughter, Darlene Walker, says this story was part of a family project during the pandemic — compiling her mother's memories into a "book of life."