While I was out shopping at the mall, I got to counting how many of the stores there I remembered from my childhood. Not very many.
The department stores in Ft Worth were Leonards, Striplings and Monnigs. None of those exist anymore. Leonards was the biggest, with it’s own private subway. Downtown Ft Worth was built on a bluff above the river and Leonards built a big parking lot down below and offered free parking and a free subway ride to everyone. There was only one stop, in the basement of their store. Lots of people would always park there whenever they went downtown. It was a great way to get traffic in to the store. But evidently not enough to beat out the traffic to the malls.
The only names I recognized in the mall were Neiman-Marcus and Radio Shack. Neiman’s was too rich for our blood growing up, but I’m sure we bought a few gifts at Radio Shack.
We also did a lot of shopping at the big Montgomery Wards store (or Monkey Wards, as it was called) and later at the Sears store when it opened. Those were the chain stores of the day.
There’s always a lot of talk about how Walmart is changing small towns but it is easy to forget how much larger towns have changed too. Department stores, restaurants and banks are all the same everywhere now.
Comments (3)
Isn’t that the truth. People yell about how Walmart drives the show, but it would not if people just would not shop there.
Bill I can’t beleive you have not gotten ONE right!!! I think you are faking it. LOLOLOL quick run over and tell them the answer…no one has it yet!
A similar thing has happened here. I remember, for example, the Harris Company which occupied a Spanish baroque structure in downtown San Bernardino. The store went out of business some years ago and has been replaced by one of those chains out of New York. I feel that the town lost something of its identity when that occurred.
When I was a kid, my grandparents would take me downtown Detroit to the big flagship Hudson’s store and we would walk through the extravagent holiday displays, tons of styrofoam and cotton fluff to make an interior seem a winter wonderland.
No way can you tell me that Marshal Field’s is Hudson’s. I just call it Hudson’s and laugh at the sour salefolk who contradict me.
Kern Drugs, Kresgees, Perry Drugs… gone.
And so you remember when A&W used to make the most lucious onion rings on the planet? Huge thick slabs of rings dipped in flour, not cornmeal? I used to skip buying lunch at school in favor of picking up a bag of these on my way home…