Showing posts with label dime stores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dime stores. Show all posts

Monday, December 13, 2010

Retail Tale

I left J. G. McCrory out of my list of dime stores the other day. It seems that a bunch of guys (Kresge, Murphy and Newberry) got their starts working at McCrory stores.

Speaking of retail, I heard on NPR this morning that The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, has filed for Chapter 11. Not going under, just looking to fix themselves up.

A&P was never my favorite. My mother preferred Jewel, possibly because her father once worked for the Jewel Tea Company, so I did too. I don't know what Grampie did for them. Maybe he was a Jewel Tea Man. I remember the Jewel Tea Man coming to our house in his brown truck when I was quite young. Actually, I think the National Tea Man did too. After a while they gave that up and just opened stores.

It’s interesting that most grocery store chains are local or regional, although many of them are subsidiaries of others – Kroger owns a bunch with different names.

How about this bit of oddball trivia: Winn-Dixie, which is the iconic grocery store in the deep south, was founded in Idaho.

When I was a small child, I decided that Piggly Wiggly was the stupidest imaginable name for a grocery store. I still think so.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Another One

It's 12-11-10. I had something to say about this a few months ago -- I think it was around 8-9-10, maybe. I don't really remember.

Holiday cookie baking is in full swing. So far we have chocolate chip, peanut butter, and Margarita cookies, and a couple bushels of Chex mix. Oh, and a small bucket of oyster cracker snack mix too, ranch flavor, of course.

My grandmother used to call them oisture crackers (rhymes with moisture). She also called Kresge's "kress-idge." How many of us are old enough to remember S. S. Kresge? That's what became K-Mart.

What was it with the initials for five-and-dimes? S. S. Kresge, F. W. Woolworth, J. J. Newberry, W. T. Grant, G. C. Murphy, Ben Franklin. Oops. Well, lots of them had initials.

I wonder how J. C. Penney got upgraded to a department store.

Back to holiday baking. Peanut brittle next.