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Man robbed by another man during initial sex meet

Let&rsquo;s see. Should I spread a couple of water pistols out and then place the kites against the side wall? Or perhaps I could display some balsa wood glider planes &#8230; Wait, maybe I should go for a selection of tricks like real-looking rubber snakes and spiders.
				I&rsquo;ll tell you, it wasn&rsquo;t easy being a teenage window decorator in my parents&rsquo; variety store back in the 1950s. I don&rsquo;t remember exactly how I acquired that task. But somehow it fell to me to make sure the display windows in front inspired the passers-by to rush in and buy not just a pack of smokes or a tin of aspirin but also maybe a realistic-looking scorpion to drop on someone.
				I doubt that many people today, though, perform this task for a living. With rare exceptions, stores no longer employ &ldquo;window dressers,&rdquo; as they used to be called. In fact, hardly any stores today even have windows to dress. They&rsquo;re big boxes with gray exterior walls.
				If there was a golden age of store windows and their decorators, it was a pretty long one, running from the late 1800s up through about our own 1960s.
				That was a time when &mdash; in the absence of the Internet and color inserts &mdash; a standard consumer modus operandi consisted of strolling around an urban downtown, checking out the lavish window displays to see how the new family clothing styles, the bedding and the chinaware would look in one&rsquo;s own life. Nearly every place of business put its goods in the front windows. Among my favorites were the television shops. Along about 1953 you&rsquo;d actually see groups of people standing there, watching a completely silent John Cameron Swayze deliver the nightly news on a dozen screens.&rsquo;
				The ultimate in showcasing was reached by department stores. Their windows traced the seasons by moving from kids in the back-to-school gear (a book or two lying around) to models wearing the latest swimsuits, with an occasional beach ball and set of sunglasses on display to make it clear these styles meant fun, fun, fun in the summer sun.
				Christmas, of course, was the true high point of the year for the window dresser&rsquo;s art. Toy trains, comfy chairs, cardboard fireplaces, lighted trees and plenty of fake snow helped get you in the mood for spending your cash.
				The yule prize, though, was taken by animated displays of elves with broad smiles endlessly manufacturing something or other at work benches or of Santa&rsquo;s moving sleigh landing and re-landing on a rooftop. You couldn&rsquo;t find clearer reminders that you&rsquo;d better get into the store and buy now before all the good stuff was gone and your family would be sunk in disappointment.
				In competition with the great professionals downtown, I did my best with our store&rsquo;s windows. Not having much elaborate merchandise to work with, I used a lot of props like Fourth of July streams, vampire masks and spray cans that put ersatz frost on the glass. If I felt a bit devilish, I&rsquo;d toss in something like a rubber finger with a nail through it and some fake blood.
				Well, I never rose to the heights of professional window dressing. Maybe that was OK, though, because except in a few big cities window dressing as a craft has pretty much joined whale harpooning as an occupation that has little present or future.
				At this time, though, I will ponder one question.
				Could I be the last person ever to have put a fake rattlesnake on display?

Remember When: Small businesses served the neighborhoods