As a kid, a rainy summer day in Gloucester in the 1960s meant a movie at the theater on Main Street, Candle Pin Bowling by the dreaded rotary, a museum, or arts and crafts at home with WSBK on the TV as background noise. When it came to arts and crafts, it was a mix of writing and addressing postcards my mother insisted my sister and I send to friends and relatives before school started in the fall, and my weird, creative, warped mind screwing with those postcards. My mother blamed it on MAD Magazine, which is why I read it. Years later I would work for MAD, so there you go, mom!
Decades before the computer, email or Photoshop, I would sit and cut out pictures from magazines and newspapers, then using gobs of Elmer’s Glue to paste them onto the postcards. Each one a piece of art. No longer would I hear how anyone got the same postcard, and considering there were only six different postcards available at Mal’s (then Ame’s, now a giant Stop& Shop), it was quite an accomplishment.
During the 1980s I was able to make color copies of postcards I was still defacing. I now have folders full of them, from cities around the country, but Gloucester will always be my favorite place to make the recipients wonder if the town is a little too weird.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Joey, remember when after Mal’s and before Ames, that site was” Kings Department Store. I moved here from Marblehead in 1973, when Gloucester was still sleepy, and High Popples Road was mostly blueberry bushes and you could park easily on Main street in front of Browns Department Store, and Adaskos of Salem was here beside Empire, and “Errors from the East” a women’s clothing store featuring seconds and irregular clothes was located in the East end. I bet you don;t remember the short lived restaurant located beside of Mooters Package store where there is a tar parking lot now? It was called ” Mother Anne’s Fast Buck Boutique and Marching Band. ” and they sold fried plates with a drink for 99cents. Honest to got truth Poll your friends if you don’t believe me. Lois
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