Decatur's downtown provided our family of six daughters with housing and employment throughout our youth and young adulthood.

In 1934, our mother was widowed. The family of six Printy sisters and mother moved downtown above Post Jewelry Store. My mother worked as a janitress for Ada Black's Beauty Salon, which was above Post Jewelry in the northeast corner. Our mother also cleaned doctor's offices in the Citizens Building.

My eldest sister, Mary Jane, worked in Webb's Tea Room and The Surrey restaurant. My sister Betty worked in Post Jewelry and later at Van Law's. We soon moved to the northwest part of town.

My next sister, Dorothy, worked at Millikin National Bank during her high school days. I started working in Reed's Shoe Store, near Hecht's Clothing Store on North Water Street.

From 1945 through 1949 I was employed at Stewart Dry Goods. I worked in sportswear and also operated the open steel elevator. It was pretty scary for me as the elevator was very shaky at times.

I remember the lunch counter - delicious barbeque sandwiches and yummy hot fudge sundaes. My younger sister, Helen, worked as a personal secretary at Flora's Jewelry Store. My baby sister, Peggy, was secretary for the First Evangelical Lutheran Church, formerly the Post Office at Main and Eldorado Streets. The First Lutheran Church, which we attended, moved to its current location on West Decatur Street and celebrated its 125th anniversary on Oct. 27, 2007.

In May 1949 I was married and my husband, Jack, and I lived in Chicago four years. We had two children, Doug and Jackie, and returned to Decatur in November 1953. My husband worked for Byers' Television and later Frank's TV. He started an electronics school on North Church Street in 1968.

My mother-in-law was a seamstress and held sewing classes at the Sears location downtown. The building that housed Sears is now the Decatur Public Library.

Our best memories of downtown shops were Ashemos Candy Shop, Berg's Shoe Shop, Hecht's Clothing Store, Woolworth and Kresge. While attending Decatur High School, we enjoyed The Chocolate Shop, Wayside Inn and Van Zetti Bakery. Our favorite shops on Merchant Street were The Cash Market, Liberty Fruit Market and The Popcorn Shop.

We are very happy to still have Flora Gems, Raupp's Shoe Store, Haines & Essick's and Del's Popcorn Shop in our downtown area today.

Remember the Good Ol' Days! We are proud to be in Decatur, our home town.

Ambassador Hotel was a top spot

I worked from 1979 to 1985 at the Ambassador Hotel, which is now the Macon County Office Building. I had some good times and met some unusual people back then.

We had a piano bar, and we would have live music and dancing five nights a week, Tuesday through Saturday. Some of the organists were "Mict" Milnick, Steven H. Walters, and C.B. and Teri Kelton. Some of the "old-timers" will remember them.

The Ambassador was owned by Jack Wyse Inc. and managed by Max Baker, both deceased now. We served lunch at 11 a.m. and ran right through until 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday and had a brunch on Sundays. Remember? Ray Shaw was the chef when we first opened back in the middle 1960s, which was before my time.

Back in the early 1980s, we had a group staying at the hotel one weekend and they were playing at the Lincoln Theater and heading on to Springfield to play at the fair. After the show at the Lincoln, they came into the lounge for refreshments and I asked what they were called. It was "Alabama," the same band that went on to fame.

Remember Sly and the Family Stone? We had them one night by accident. They were heading to Peoria and their van broke down and jack Wyse said he would put them up for the night if they would play for our company Christmas party the next night.

Then in 1985 we had the organist of the St. Louis Cardinals, who was a friend of Max Baker, staying at the hotel while visiting friends for the Christmas holidays and he played a few tunes. So though it has not been so long ago to classify as "The Good Ol' Days," a lot of people I run into say, "remember when?"

There is no place today like the Ambassador, where you can go and sit down with a good meal, live entertainment and dance. Too bad, so I guess you could say to a lot of the people like me they were "the Good Ol' Days."

- Jack Crafton

Good restaurants part of landscape

Places I remember include:

* The House of Plenty, a bar-restaurant owned by Angelo Dracos that served an all-you-can-eat buffet on Sunday night for $1.25. Many of us Millikin students in 1959 to 1963 would partake each Sunday, stuffing ourselves with fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

* Romano's Pizza, at the corner of Jasper and Johns, I think. It was the world's greatest pizza, still the best I have ever tasted, and the first, too. Coming to Millikin from a small town, Durand in Northern Illinois, I had never eaten pizza.

* Swartz Restaurant had the world's greatest homemade pies and a model railroad train running around the tracks near the ceiling of the restaurant.

By the way, I have written a book about a legendary fast-pitch softball team in my hometown of Durand that played in the 1940s and 1950s. They were called the Durand Merchants and my uncle, Roy Wilke, was the star pitcher. These farm boys from the small village - 500 or so people - won 80 percent of their games with the best teams from the big cities of Rockford, Freeport and Beloit, Wis.

The name of the book, published by Kansas City Star books, is "Durand's Marvelous Merchants: A Tale of Small Town Life and Big Time Softball." It's available at Millikin's book store and at kansascity.com.

- Mike Waller