CRESTVIEW — Milk shakes at Dupree’s, dragging Main, smooching in the Fox, and dancing to the jukebox at Crescent Springs Swimming Pool: that's how Crestview teenagers once spent their carefree years.
“Teenagers of this era were like teenagers of today — always complaining there was nothing to do in this town,” Betty Curenton and Claudia Patten wrote in “Crestview: The Forkland.”
“Looking back, we can see we usually found a lot to get into.”
Dupree’s Drive-In, where burgers and fries were affordable, was a popular haunt. So were drug store soda fountains, with several on Main Street, including Brackin’s and City Pharmacy.
“The malted milk shakes and ice cream sodas were really a treat, and we really enjoyed cherry Cokes when they came out,” Curenton and Patten wrote.
'THE PLACE TO GO'
Warm spring days, hot summers and balmy early autumn days in the late 1940s and early '50s were spent at former mayor Purl Adams’ Crescent Springs Swimming Pool. Families could picnic on a hill above the pool, and buy burgers and hotdogs from Purl Jr., his son, at the concession stand.
Purl Jr. doubled as a lifeguard, and periodically abandoned the grill to dash to the pool and haul a sodden swimmer to safety, Barbara Adams, Purl Jr.’s widow, recalls. “He said a lot of times he would be in the sandwich shop and somebody would scream and he would run and dive in with his clothes on to rescue them,” she said. “That Purl!”
At night, teens gathered under the pool’s pavilion and danced under festive colored lights to music on the jukebox. “We had some good times out there,” Joe Curenton, Betty’s husband, said. “It was big. It was a nice place… It was the place to go.”
Teens also would buy a few gallons of gas — then about $.15 to $.20 a gallon — and head to Shoal River, Turkey Hen Creek or Garret’s Mill Pond. “Almost everyone remembers at least one ‘skinny dipping’ trip,” Curenton and Patten stated. “No matter how hot the day, it never took long to cool off in our local waters.”
DRIVE-INS AND DRAGGING
During the evenings, young people headed to the Fox, Eglin and Crestview movie theatres on Main Street for Hollywood’s latest fare.
In the 1950s, Neal Robinson built the Dixie Drive-In theatre on Juke Hill — around the site of today’s Big Lots on South Ferdon Boulevard — while Hinson Ward built the Park Drive-In Theatre on U.S. 90 West.
“Most of us remember going to the drive-ins and paying for two tickets for those in the car,” Curenton and Patten wrote. “There would be two more (people) emerging from the trunk when the car parked.”
For teens with cars, or those who borrowed their folks’ automobile or rode with someone, nights weren’t over until they “drug Main,” or cruised the length of Main Street to see and be seen before heading home.
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: CRESTVIEW CENTENNIAL: Remembering our top teen hangouts