A Retro Look Inside Anderson's Music

A child's memory can tend to hone in on funhouse mirror-like images.

You know, the ones in which you see this out-of-proportioned face coming at you, giant nose-first and stretched like a piece of taffy, voice garbled and squawking like Charlie Brown's teacher.

Then there are the places, like stores — shelves and merchandise towering above and around you, floors and aisles endless and gleaming like, well, some sort of Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole.

That's what Anderson's, now Jack's, in Red Bank, looked like to me. And after digging around in my mother's old photos — the mother, Sally, who worked there in the late 1950s and early 1960s — I found a photo of the place that didn't really prove me that much wrong.

What I thought were hardwood floors, though, were some sort of linoleum, albeit still quite shiny. And while all places look disproportionately large to little kids, this one just happened to be just that ... pretty darn big.

It was, in fact, lined with wooden record holders filled with albums, sheet music and 45s. And there were instruments, namely pianos downstairs. Upstairs there were more, like shiny horns and guitars hanging on the walls.

But you can't see them in this picture. What you can see are the rows of televisions I had forgotten they had — big console black-and-white TVs, considered a luxury to have in those days. Anderson's, one reader reminded us, was largely an appliance store when it first opened.

Anderson's was orignally at 21 Broad Street, sister of Jack, Lonnie wrote us. She, who worked with my mom, also offered some other tidbits of information.

"It later moved to the former First Merchants Bank building," Lonnie said. "The current Jack's was formerly Yanko's Department store," which later became Carrolls, I think, or was next to it.

Pictured here is Anderson's when it was in that location (or next door), where it is now, as Jack's, again.

Oh, and dad Anderson's first name was, indeed, "Bev." That was his nickname, Lonnie said. His full name was John Beverly Anderson. Jack is JB Anderson II and his son is JB the third.

Thanks for the information and memories, Lonnie! Thanks, "Bev"!

Feel free to add your memories of Anderson's and name a place you'd like us to revisit.