Do you remember the days when it seemed like a different deliveryman would walk down the street every day, or when shopping was done at corner stores down the street instead of at big box stores or online?



Then come relive those memories, and maybe share a few of your own, as the Lansdale Historical Society presents “Going, Going, Gone,” its first fall community program this year.

“It’s going to be kind of an eclectic program, of all sorts of things that just don’t exist anymore,” said LHS Vice President Steve Moyer.

He’ll be giving the presentation at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, at Lansdale’s Parks and Recreation building on the corner of Seventh Street and Lansdale Avenue.

And he plans to tell his audience all about plenty of things that just aren’t around anymore.

“We have a whole lot of images of businesses, places and professions that no longer exist,” Moyer said.

“For example, there used to be somebody that brought ice to your house to put it in the icebox, there used to be somebody who brought milk to your house, there used to be a rag man that came to your house and picked up rags,” Moyer said.

“There were lots of delivery trucks back in the day, and there are lots of businesses that we don’t have many pictures of but we know were around,” he said.

Blacksmiths, seamstresses, leather workers, nail makers, weavers, shoe shiners and tanners are just some of the professions we know Lansdale once had but just don’t see anymore, he said.

Some have disappeared with time, like the men who’d come to your house to collect insurance money each week, and some have been lost to technological progress, like telephone operators and horse carriage drivers.

“There used to be butter and egg men who came to your house, milkmen, vacuum cleaner salesmen, encyclopedia salesmen; there wasn’t much that couldn’t be delivered right to your house,” he said.

“But I don’t know if you can even buy an encyclopedia today thanks to the Internet,” Moyer said.

Tuesday night’s presentation is free to the public, but come early because seats tend to fill up quickly with area residents looking to relive days long gone.

“Most of our programs take anywhere from 100 to 200 hours to build up by the time we’re done, but it sure doesn’t seem like that much when you’re sitting here working on it,” said Moyer.

He’ll even discuss some hidden gems that very few people are still around to remember, like an old air raid shelter that was built near the corner of Broad and Main streets during World War II.

“It used to be behind the Tremont hotel, which was where the Rite Aid is now. Dick Shearer, our LHS president, says the shelter must have worked because they never attacked us during the war,” Moyer said.