Lewis's

"Rod, yer comin' down ter Lewis's?" my mate Fred said. "Smashin'. What time?" I replied.

Lewis's beamed on Manchester like the lions of Trafalgar Square over London or the Statue of Liberty over New York.

It was a mere department store but location it certainly had - peering like a fussing mother over Piccadilly Gardens which was Manchester's hub.

The Gardens themselves were just that. A huge square, an expanse of colourful flowers and green lawns in spring. Sunken gardens with large benches where you could sit peacefully out of earshot of
the rumbling city traffic.

Surrounding them was the heart of the blood-red bus system with its arteries flowing to all the suburbs. I always looked out for Uncle Eric, He was a bus conductor and when he was on board he never collected my fare! The bus terminals encircled the gardens yet when you were sitting amid the flowers it was like being in an outdoor florist shop.

Climb perhaps a dozen steps and you were on Piccadilly with its broad pavements and dawdling crowds, and statues.

At night in the 50s Piccadilly had its seamy side. Hundreds (so it seemed) of prostitutes paraded there nightly, the main reason probably the Burtonwood US Air Force base a few miles away at Warrington. When the Americans went, so did the ladies of the night, but they and the taxi drivers no doubt missed the dough boys with their seemingly endless supply of pound notes.

It was the Lewis's store itself that fascinated me and hundreds of other teenagers on a Saturday morning.

It had at least six floors as I recall, and in the basement was the Records Dept with the latest from Frankie Laine, Guy Mitchell, Johnnie Ray and Doris Day sitting in snugly-fitting cardboard boxes, so all the labels were face up in the box.

Those artistes were all on Philips which was the American Columbia. Philips had a blue background and white lettering. Possibly the other way round, it was so long ago. HMV was red and cream, and I remember Eddie Fisher recorded for them. How I loved his version of "Oh My Papa."

There was also Decca, Parlophone. Many of the LPs were 10 inch when they first came out, the twelve inch soon became much more popular.

The records were large, black, shiny vinyl encased in brown paper with a  hole cut out inthe middle to reveal the record details. If you dropped one, it broke immediately since they were very brittle.  They played at 78 rpm hence the term "78s". The LPs though were much more pliable.

We went there as a gang as did many teenagers, but rarely bought the records. There was a loudspeaker system and we pretended to be customers - listening for hours to the latest hits. The security men twigged it, but were very tolerant. Probably because people in numbers were good for business!