Hills
McCrory’s
Ames
Hess’s
Fancy Fruit Market
Judy Jean’s Bakery

(Many of these are regional)

But we did all our school shopping at Hills. And they had a killer snack bar.

Judy Jeans made the best cake. We bought one on a Saturday and put it on top the fridge. The next day it was full of big black carpenter ants. My mom had a fit!!!

Never heard of any of them!

I missed Herters until I found out how big of crook he was, I miss Gander Mountain and the old Cabela and the old Fleet Farm

I miss the 80's.

Dude same. It was a fun time to grow up

Had this one.

McCrory's! I forgot all about that.... as soon as you said the name I remembered it.....and I remember that I really liked the store as a child, but for the life of me I can not picture it or even where it was.

Hills was better than Ames. I never cared for Ames, preferring Kmart over it. When Hills went out of business in Niagara Falls, it was replaced by Ames. Both stores had the same painted dinosaurs on the sidewalk out front that you could ride for a quarter. They just kinda went up and down, sort of like a carousel but in one place....

Grandpa Pidgeon, their massive fishing stuff sale every spring.

We used to have a hooters here also, never heard about the guy running it but the girls were nice

K-mart, block buster, kohls food store.....many restaurants

Murphys Mart, K Mart, Sears and Montgomery Wards, Woolworths . We had all of them here in Butler in the 1970s.

Fancy Fruit Market smelled of wet cardboard. But they had a bubble gum machine and we would save our nickels for it.

Ames which was pronounced ames's and grand union every Thursday night after my mother deposited the paychecks. Agreed great times.

Oh Sears. Me and my pap used to buy our fishing licenses there

TG&Y, Gibson's, Sears before they went down the tubes.

McCrory’s was in our mall. They had just about everything including a very small pet department with fish birds and little hamsters.

The Woolworths store here had a big pet department. There was a parrot there named Charlie. It could talk. The store closed up in the early 1980s. Someone from the store took the parrot home. It died a couple years ago, it was 78 years old.

Woah! A parrot is quite a commitment

Gemco

We have the last blockbuster here locally

Last one of 9000

To this day???

Montgomery wards, Kmart, Cabela's

You could buy guns and even house kits to build your own home. Sears and Roebuck?

ALCO. Smaller than most walmarts but bigger than DGs. Come to think of it we didn't really have DGs back in those days. It was located in the same strip mall as the local theater. We would load up on candy there to sneak into the movies.

Yes still open ....a bit of a novelty.....tourist getting picture in front of the street sign all the time

Does anyone remember "Brand Names"?

That's cool AG. Had no idea there was still one in existence.

Yes, George Herter was a crook, and a BSer but in the 60s Herter's was all there was.
As a kid I spent many a winter night looking over the Herter's mail order catalogs. Some of his stuff was pretty good.

KAPLIN BROTHERS

Down on lake street in Minneapolis. When I was a kid run by a wonderful extended, Jewish family, and they worked off commission. So they were always trying to help you with little notepads, writing down what you wanted to buy. It was magical because they had a beautiful beautiful daughter. One of them did, and I'd always try to give her my credits

Radioshack was cool

I worked for autozone when it was called auto shack .....then radio shack got bent

Now no radio shack .....

Western Auto
Piggly Wiggly

5 and 10 cent stores

Yep, Radio Shack is another one I miss. Simple stuff, resistors, small capacitors, pc boards etc...........No place to buy them local anymore. Luckily, Amazon does. .

The old Bernstien Applebys electronics stores were pretty good too. They went out in the late 1960s, just about the tile industry switched over from vacuum tube to solid state electronics.

Wilmington Dry Goods, Woolworth 5 & 10, Gaylords, and Gimbels.

Would get the Brand Names catalog. Every product had a number.
Then go to Dunkirk to the store, fill out a form and what you bought would shoot out of a conveyor through a hole in the wall!!


I also miss Twin Fair

I miss all the stores that gave a dam about what they were selling. Most every public store has employees that are nothing more than stockers or checkout workers. You are lucky if they ever ask can I help you.

^^^^ THIS !

Alco had a sister company, Duckwalls which was a smaller store in smaller towns that was actually the profitable side. They hired a new CEO who decided the way to make Alco profitable was to close all the Duckwalls.

Add Otasco to the list.

Herters

I miss Swallens Department Store in Springdale, Ohio,a suburb of Cincinnati. I got my Ruger 10/22, with a cherry wood stock on my 16th birthday and my Remington 870 Express, Super Mag Combo there on my 18th birthday. Most of our school supplies came from there. I got pet fish and aquariums from there too.

Once, my dad pinned a car against a fence in the parking lot, that hit his Mustang at Swallens and then fled, trying to get out. The entire parking lot was fenced and gated on the side. My dad then jumped out, ran up and pulled the driver from the car and pinned him against the fence too. That guy was terrified and literally peed his pants.

Keith

Spencer’s in all the malls, always went straight to black light posters and such loved those …

Winky’s

Rogers Army Navy

In a lot of smaller towns there would be a Gambles or Coast to Coast store. Seemed to be guns to buy there along with the owners were usually on site and seemed to be more helpful when you wanted something or had a question.

As far as bigger stores I miss the old Cabelas. We have one here and I rarely go into it. Stuffs just too expensive and the bargain cave is gone.

S&H Green Stamp

Sears, spent a lot of time in their hardware department while the wife shopped in other stores at the mall.

JJ Newberry

Pamida

Cabelas

We had

Chains:
Gibsons
TG&Y
Otasco
Piggly Wiggly
Green Stamp Store
Western Auto
Sears
KMart
Monkey Wards

Local:
Ferguson's Grocery
The Sportster (mini Bass Pro/ Cabelas type) had everything
Discount City (about 40mi away but had to go by it on the way to where we deer hunted so frequented it a lot)

Spencer's was awesome

Famous Barr Sears. Western auto

Grew up in the mid 50's thru the 60's. The old Sears store's seemed to have everything. Herter's catalog I flat wore out. I still have a few of the fishing rods I built from the kits they sold. One of the biggest was the OLD gas stations that seemed to be on every corner. Windows washed , oil checked and 39 cent gas. I do believe that pouring over the Herter's catalog is where I really learned to read.

Grew up in the 60's, our village had a business center with everything you can think of, groceries to guns, all separate stores run by owners and their families. no need to go anywhere else.

Then the department stores came, then the malls, took 30 years but ended up a ghost town....now the place has been restored!, nothing but bars and restaurants competing to see which one can go bankrupt quicker, to be replaced by another bar/restaurant...

I guess I miss the old hardware store, walk in, tell the owner what you needed and he'd go get it, never left without everything you came in for..lol

In Northwest Pa Northeast OH Buffalo NY and Pittsburgh PA Dahlkemper's

You mean like this?

https://youtu.be/FklFQzT2btg?si=2vZxSnTB6NcWZiak

Use to be a ventures store near me when I was a kid.. they had a pretty decent pet section.. I remember getting a bunch of fire newts there.
Also was a Ben Franklin store.
I don’t know if there’s any radio shack stores around anymore either.

Late 80's Early 90's Radio Shack was where it was at. Hand held CB radios used to have three channels. A B or C selector swtich. That would put you on channel 19, 14, or 20... whatever you had it setup for. We hunted on channel 1. To get channel one in those you had to take the radio apart and find the six crystals on the circuit board. One for sending and one for receiving for each of the three channels. To get channel 1 you had to go to radio shack, buy both channel 1 crystals, and tear your radio apart and install the proper crystals.

Radios now have a thousand channels, you don't have to know how to do anything anymore. Good times. Probably my first electronics project and I went on to be and electronics nerd later in life.

I might need a radio shack t shirt of some kind.

We used to sew holster sleeves for our radios. Factory was metal telescopic antennas, those got replaced with rubber duct antennas.... from radioshack.

To quote The Office: I wish someone would have told me it was the good ol days back when it was the good ol days.

We used to call in air strikes with out two way hunting radios... Good times.

Gibsons

Got my first job when I was 16 working at a McCrory's in Emporium, PA. I worked a few hours after school each day and Saturdays. Made minimum wage of $1.65/hr. Probably made $25.00/ wk after taxes. I remember getting a raise to $1.85/hr.

Caldor department store , bankrupt 1999 , New England region
I saved a couple store flyers from that era.

Caldor was a discount department store chain founded in 1951 by Carl and Dorothy Bennett, known for offering name-brand goods at lower prices. The chain expanded significantly but ultimately faced financial difficulties, leading to its liquidation and closure of all stores by May 1999.
Wikipedia TeePublic
Overview of Caldor Department Store
Caldor was a discount department store chain established in 1951 by Carl and Dorothy Bennett. The name "Caldor" is a combination of their first names. The store was known for providing name-brand goods at prices significantly lower than the manufacturer's suggested retail prices.

Key Features
Founding Year: 1951
Founders: Carl and Dorothy Bennett
Business Model: Focused on quality merchandise and customer service, often referred to as "the Bloomingdale's of discounting."
Store Environment: Designed to resemble a department store with wide aisles, bright lighting, and colorful displays.
Growth and Expansion
Caldor experienced rapid growth, expanding from a single store in Port Chester, New York, to 145 locations across the Northeastern United States by the late 1990s.

Timeline of Expansion
Year Milestone
1951 First store opened in Port Chester, NY
1958 Second store opened in Norwalk, CT
1961 Went public as Caldor Inc.
1981 Acquired by Associated Dry Goods Corporation
1985 Reached $1 billion in sales
Decline and Closure
Despite its initial success, Caldor faced significant financial challenges in the 1990s. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1995 and ultimately liquidated, closing all stores by May 1999.

Reasons for Decline
Increased competition from national chains like Kmart and Walmart.
Financial struggles exacerbated by the bankruptcy of rival retailers.
A shift in consumer shopping habits and preferences.
Caldor's legacy remains as a notable part of retail history, remembered for its unique approach to discount retailing and its impact on the shopping landscape in the Northeast.

Gander Mountain in Salisbury, MD... sold out to Campers World.

Crazy Eddies

Cragar thanks for posting those flyers. It’s cool you still have em!

We also had a grocery store called Moss’s
We would occasionally get Hagan “golden rounds “ ice cream.
Moss’s deli had the absolute BEST potato salad.

Up the road there was Moss’s Food and Garden. Sold animal feed and some outdoor stuff

The local Farmers Co-Op. Had one of the nickel pop machines where you dragged your soda bottle through the race track/maze until you got to the exit lever where you could extract the bottle. Of course, it had the bottle opener mounted on the side. The owner had the temperature set perfectly so when you popped the cap off, the top inch or so of soda was slush. Man, I can still smell the odor of feed, grain, and fertilizer.

We still have Piggly Wiggly stores here in NC. https://www.pigglywiggly.com/

A@P

Ben Franklin, Jack and Jill , Red Owl, Coast to Coast.

Remember that store while being a young one in Florida. Hate to admit I miss the malls. When young it was the location to meet young gals outside your local. Got my levi's at j.c. penny's! Even some button fly.

Jacks they had about 1 stop shpping back in the day.

Amen brother. Though I was never much of a Herters shopper. I will add Hawbaker's Trap Supply mail order version.

Ben Franklin

Gambles

Coast to Coast

Holiday gas station when they had a sporting good section

Hardware Hank

J.C. Penny's sporting good section

K Mart End of season specials on Shotgun shells. Or Blue light special.

A W drive up and the Rootbeer

Rexall Drug

Super Valu

We had a Holiday station in my hometown.H
One of my brothers still has the.22 that dad bought there and that all of us learned to shoot with.
A Glenfield (Marlin) model25.
I think that the first rods and reels any of us had were purchased there as well.

I purchased my first 22 from Holiday gas station in Jamestown N.D. It is a Glenfield md 60 and 32.00 or 39.00 back in 1972. I still have mine, I wish how many rounds I have ran thru it.