Everyone has her own memory of the Rialto corner at Second and Center streets, said Casper sisters Anna Dell Harris and Laura Rodlend, who popped into the newly remodeled Rialto Cigar Store on Tuesday.

"We used to come into the cigar store when I worked as a popcorn girl and theatre usher next door," Harris said. "My brothers would go to the pool hall - because my dad didn't want them to - and we would come over and get candy and talk to people."

Neil Rogers bought the Rialto Cigar Store a little over a year ago from his old friend Jim Crump, who died in March 2002. Since then the store has made the transition from a smut-selling smokehouse to a malt-making, ice cream dipping, 1920s-era parlor.

"I have worked really hard to get rid of all of that stuff," said Rogers, referring to the scores of porn paraphernalia the store sold. "Now it's just the Zippo lighters and some pipes which are left from before."

Filling the old shelves now are magazines - the models on the cover are properly dressed - including Wyoming Homes and Living, American Angler, and NASCAR Illustrated.

Rogers spent the last year renovating the store, peeling paint, getting rid of old porn, and restoring the shop to the way it looked when Greek immigrant Constantine Panos first opened it in 1923. Although the merchandise is fairly new, the counters, shelves and overall layout is exactly the same. Rogers has also added his own additions, like a 1913 cash register and an antique popcorn popper.

Laura Rodlend stood in awe as she realized the cigar store looked exactly like it did when she was a child in the 1920s.

"It has the same shelves and the same wood finish; it looks just like it used to," she said.

Harris and Rodlend were giving themselves a tour of downtown Casper to see how it had changed since they were there.

"Everything is different, but still manages to stay the same," said 80-year-old Rodlend as she stared at the newly refurbished wood cabinets, and not-so-new smoking pipes and lighters.

Other old-timers have also visited the store recently to share their memories with Rogers, he said.

"A veteran came by the other day and told me that during WWII they put a fence up on the corner where people would throw their metal for the war effort," Rogers said. "They would throw all their old pots and pans and any other scrap metal. I guess this was such a central place, everyone saw it."

The former pool hall beneath the cigar store is now full of storage from the street-level theatre, but Rogers can remember when it was full of people smoking and playing games.

Septuagenarian Riley Lay said he remembers moving to Casper in 1950. Since then, he said, he's been to the cigar store and the pool hall "a time or two."

"The rules were different then; you couldn't go to the pool hall unless you were over 18," he said. "There were a lot of Greeks and Italians playing cards and talking - the smoke was so thick you couldn't see the other side of the room."

But it wasn't a bad place, continued Lay; rather, it was simply a place for people to meet and talk. There wasn't a bar, and the cigar store upstairs attracted young and old alike, much like it does today.

"Neil has done a really good job on this; he's stripped off four or five layers of paint from the counters and cabinets, and restored it to what it always was. He's made it a family-type store where anyone can come," Lay said. "Before the porn paraphernalia, it had always been a family place."