"Be Home by Dark": How I Earned my Dime Store MBA

Ever wonder what the vacant buildings that line small-town main streets looked like in their heyday? What businesses were in them? Who ran them? What went on there? What about the community? What was it like living there in those times? In this memoir, author Dale K. Phenicie describes what went on in hometown businesses, in school, and in streets and back yards while growing up during the years just following WW II (1945 through the late 1950s). Freedoms his peers and he had to roam their small mid-western community networking with neighbors, business owners, and village leaders provided lessons that shaped their adulthood character. Using stories describing antics of his clan and experiences growing up in his family’s five and 10 cent (dime) store, he allows readers to experience what it was like living in a typical American small town during that era. He says, “We were always told, ‘be home by dark.’ The community “classrooms” we visited provided a life skills education similar to that of an MBA. A large part of mine came through the dime store” Read more