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.

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.