40 years ago: ‘Moonlight Madness’ overtakes downtown Lawrence

About twenty-five downtown Lawrence merchants were participating in the “Moonlight Madness” sale from 7 to 11 p.m. The Bell Music Co., Inc., located at 825 Massachusetts, ran an ad for two of its specials, an RCA-6 transistor radio (regularly $5.95) for $3.98, and a reel-to-reel tape recorder, usually $109.95, selling for $49.95. Other stores running ads for the sale included the Town Shop at 839 Mass, McCoy’s Shoes at 813 Mass, Ober’s at 821 Mass, Allison-Thomas Flowershop at 941 Mass, Carey’s Appliance at 728 Mass, and the Ben Franklin at 805 Mass, where you could buy six candy bars for 19 cents or some 36-inch cotton print material for 1 cent per inch.

Recent heavy rains might have led to Mrs. A. W. Burtscher of Quail Creek apartments finding several crawdads in the patio area outside her ground-floor apartment. Mrs. Burtscher said that she didn’t know how they got there.