Eldergays, were 5 and Dime Stores like Target?

Or were they something different?

Stores like Ben Franklin and Morgan & Lindsey were a lot smaller for one thing.

They were more. like Dollar Tree and that ilk to my way of thinking.

Smaller. Nothing huge about a 5 and dime.

A cross between Dollar Tree, CVS, and a Goodwill store (all new items, but lots of random shit).

Hah, found this. Hadn't thought about Morgan and Lindsey in years and years.

It was easier to shoplift there.

No OP. People shopped fully clothed, and fat asses couldn’t fit on the lunch counter seats.

Woolworths, especially their stores in downtown areas, were usually multiple levels and featured many different departments, but I don't think they ever approached Target store size.

Much more funky-- wood and brass fittings, no in store advertising, usually a lunch counter. no food sold

Here's a shopping center Morgan and Lindsey in 1961:

Okay, so a 5 and Dime store did not have a giant grocery store within its walls, so there's that. I don't remember all of the stores, but I don't think they had the array of clothing either. Many did have pet departments... you could buy birds (I don't remember puppies and kittens). Woolworth's was known for its in-store restaurant - well counter service.

The products sold were basic, not expensive.

I remember how there was always a "notions" department within the stores... what an odd word I thought as a child. And all of those items needed for sewing and knitting and such!

[quote]Eldergays, were 5 and Dime Stores like Target?

No--their registers never went down due to a computer issue.

R11, When you finished perusing the notions, you could wander over to the sundries section.

Woolworth's was great. They carried all sorts of things you can't find in Target or the dollar stores. When I was a poor student and wore out my shoes I could get those shoe patch kits for a few dollars and put off having to buy new shoes for a while longer.

Our downtown had a Woolworths. Notions, records, cosmetics, household items, birds and bird cages, gold fish, inexpensive things like flip flops, swimsuits, underwear, socks, jewelry.

R11 nailed it.

As a child, I loved perusing the cheap toys. My mother would usually give me some change to buy whatever I wanted.

Yes cheap toys and the penny candy counter.

Yes, Dollar Tree is a pretty good comparison, but the Five and Ten's were much better maintained.

Just add a lunch counter and a delicious smelling stand in the center of the store selling freshly made caramel corn.

Once a year, they would have a large clearance sale. The ladies on the staff would have to wear coal bucket bonnets because the promotion was named Olde Fashioned Days, where prices are old fashioned!

Madonna and Sean Penn were fans!

A five and dime was not branded inside the way target is. No target red grocery carts.

Not only notions, but bolts of fabric as well.

Woolworth's usually had a large section near the entrance for candy, roasted nuts, and popcorn. Sold by the pound. The smell was heavenly. They were located downtown, so you walked in off the street and there was this wonderful smell. They also had a large make-up and fragrance section near the front, frequented by fraus and trashy girls. The toy and pet departments were in the back - parakeets, goldfish and those little turtles. Later there were Woolworth stores in the malls.

Woolworth and Kresge were MUCH better than a Dollar Store. Though i can see some similarities to a walgreens that has tons of crap, a Dollar Store, and also Kmart - Target, and even Macy's of about 30 years ago, and TATI in Paris. 5 and Dimes didn't have WALLS of display of one type of crap, such a dollar store's wall of gift bags. They were dividers on the shelves and the would be a line of rubber cement cans - however many fit in the single line to the back fo the shelf and that's it. Then a line Elmer's glue. They sold sparkles. And balsam wood gliders, and cheap toiletries but brands you knew. Records, plants, pets, feather dusters, kitchen equipment, bathroom crap, cheap glassware, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. Back in the day, these products came from all over the world and the USA.

Was Morgan a gentleman caller of Lindsey?

Fun Fact to know and tell -- Sam Walton started working after his military service in a Ben Franklin Store.

I learned this at the Wal-Mart Museum in downtown Bentonville, AR.

I vaguely remember that my hometown had a Woolworth's and a Kresge's. Kind of hard to describe them by today's standards. They were like mini-department stores that sold only smaller items -- housewares, dry goods, drug store items, and some clothes. Not enough room to sell big things like furniture or appliances. I guess you could compare them to Dollar Tree. But back in the 1970s, these stores did not have aisles with tall shelves. I think all of the shelves were low, so any adult could see above them across the entire store. I suppose that cut down on shoplifting.

There used to be one near if not in the corner of the Daily News Building, 42nd and 2nd Ave. I would pop in there and feel comforted, picking up a few items.

Fun facts: the Kresge Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation were started by the founders of the S. S. Kresge and W. T. Grant five & ten cent stores. (Kresge also started K-Mart.) Do you suppose we'll ever see a Dollar Tree foundation?

[quote]Eldergays, were 5 and Dime Stores like Target?

Pretty sure they would have been like a dollar store.

I bought my FOLLIES OBC album at this very store in 1971.

We had a TG&Y store near us. A small store but they had a lot of what people wanted. Lots of sewing and crafts stuff. Some simple toys but not the ones currently advertised on TV. Just lots and lots of little things. Candy, but no other food sold at our TG&Y. Just odds and ends, but stuff that sold. These were neighborhood shops. Woolworth's, by contrast, was a much bigger store, almost like a department store, and had a lunch counter with hot food.

Five and tens were nothing like dollar stores. Here’s the interior of a Grant's in Portland, Maine in the '50s, showing about half of the ground floor. There was also a basement and mezzanine which can be seen at the rear. Not shown are the small army of clerks, who were knowledgeable, helpful and polite. It really was a different world back then.

The 5 and 10 cent stores I remember, like Kresge, McCrory and Woolworth's, were built in the early 20th century and were relatively dark inside and had creaky wooden floors.

r34 Woolco was not a five-and-dime. It was Woolworth's attempt to emulate Kmart (which as noted above came from a Woolworth competitor, Kresge.) Similarly W.T. Grant begat Grant City, and there were other regional chains that tried the same thing (G.C. Murphy and Murphy's Mart for one.)

Most five-and-dimes, or as they became to be known, "variety stores," were regional. There were a few national chains like Woolworth and Kresge. In my area (Bay Area) we had Sprouse-Reitz, TG&Y, and S.H. Kress.

I’m never sure whether what I’m looking for will be found in “notions” or “sundries.” I’m such a loser.

You could find wonderful odds and ends at Woolworth's like...like....photograph corner mounts in black, white, AND red!

Some of you queens are blinded by nostalgia.

The five and ten cent stores had a lot of cheap shit in them. They had housewares. They had basic hardware. They had some home furnishings. They had school supplies and artificial flowers. All of it much like a dollar store, but not so ratty and unkempt. Not so dire. Not so in the gutter, as our entire society is now.

Nothing then was Made in China, but it was Made in Japan, for sure. Nothing in these stores was Department Store quality.

Don't forget parakeets and gold fish and turtles. You could often go in and see an escaped parakeet flying through the store.

But to suggest they were like Target is not going to convey the Five and Ten store. That was Five and Ten cents... not dollars.

Compare that Made in Japan quality to the Made in China quality of today, r41.

[quote]That was Five and Ten cents... not dollars.

You know about inflation, right R41?

Made in China is slightly better today than 20-30 years ago. They used to use some truly toxic crap to make the crap, you could smell it off gassing in your Weber's bag.

[quote] It really was a different world back then.

Not having to worry about renewable resources and spending $10 when they could spend $1.

They sold inexpensive costume jewelry like clip-on earrings and pop-bead necklaces.

I remember Woolworth's having these figural candy bottles. I thought they were so cool yet I never bought any. Probably because the candy wasn't like a Forever Yours bar or Bonomo's Turkish Taffy where, candy-wise, there was more bang for the buck.....err....nickle.

I tagged along when our neighbors bought a parrot at Woolworth's. Not a canary, a real Amazon parrot, and I distinctly remember that the parrot, cage, seed, and everything came to $28.

Woolworth on 34th street was great. I bought my first wig there.

It seems to me that the through line for all these types of stores was the lunch counter.

From Wikipedia:

Well-known dime store companies included:[14]

Ben Franklin Stores

Butler Brothers

Duckwall-ALCO

W. T. Grant

H. L. Green

John's Bargain Store (sometimes called "Cheap John's")[15][16]

S. S. Kresge Co.

S. H. Kress & Co.

Morgan and Lindsey

J. G. McCrory's

McLellan Stores

G. C. Murphy

Neisner's

J. J. Newberry's

Sprouse-Reitz

TG&Y

Walton's Five and Dime

Woolworth's

Our local Woolworth's had linoleum, r48. The downtown one had wooden floors.

I was a child for the tail end of the 5 & Dime stores in the late 70s/early 80s. I know I went to a couple Ben Franklin stores and there was a Woolworth still with a small lunch counter in the mall near my grandparents in Columbus, OH. In Texas we had a place called Wackers that later became Winn’s until it shut down in the mid-late 80s. I mostly remember finding toys at those stores you never saw anywhere else.

r52 Our Woolworth's, which was downtown, had wooden floors. I think Kresge's did, too. It was also downtown, in our small New Jersey city.

That song calls to mind my husband's parents. His dad met his mom, when she worked at a G.C. Murphy's. THAT song became THEIR song.

Thanks for the little bit of nostalgia.

I fondly remember the Notions Dept at Woolworth's. Now, if you want a spool of thread or a pack of safety pins, you have to find a fabric store (rare) or a craft store like Michael's (over-priced). Dollar Tree carries the pins but they're flimsy.

m y mother grew up just down the street from the Kresge mansion in Detroit, off Woodward

Any Canadians here? Is Bi-way still in business? I’m an ex-pat.

I was working part-time at the 5 and Dime My boss was Mr. McGee. He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind. I was a bit too leisurely. It seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing But different from the day before. That’s when I saw her ooh I saw her She walked in through the out door Out door,

Please don't play governess, Karen. I haven't your unyielding good taste. I wish I could have gone to Radcliffe too, but Father wouldn't hear of it. He needed help behind the notions counter!

Cheap made in Japan toys,wax teeth and lips,candy cigarettes,frighteningly realistic bubblegum cigarettes,"fragrances" to give your Mom on special occasions,Beatle wigs,and to ruin it all,school supplies.

[quote]and to ruin it all, school supplies

But I loved getting a new pencil box when the school year started!

I remember the Woolworth store in Times Square.

1940's postcard of Times Square.

Bi-Way is supposedly coming back sometime this year, r59 This time it's to be called 'Bi-Way $10 Store.

I remember our dad taking us to Woolworths soda fountain for a cherry coke.

Just had a flashback. Anyone remember S & H Greenstamps? You would get stamps for purchases, fill the card and redeem thru the mail or at a store. As a kid I thought they were called S & M green stamps and I didn't't dare ask for clarification.

A Woolworth lunch counter menu from the 1950s.

they write "whipped topping" - was it already not cream?

I remember green stamps. So odd.

As a kid I used to get a hot dog or grilled cheese at the lunch counter at Newberry's. And.right nearby they had these big plastic balloons that I craved, and long chains of lollipops in plastic. Funny, I can't really remember the rest of the store. I think maybe they had record albums in the back - but that might have been Woolworth's, which was on the same street. Ah, the good ole days.

Thank you, R61. One of us had to deliver!

[quote]they write "whipped topping" - was it already not cream?

R70, I think if it were real whipped cream, it would say so. Products like Redi-wip (topping from an aerosol can) and Dream Whip (a whipped "topping" from a powder blended with milk that you whipped up at home) were already around in the 1950s.

A Ben Franklin in a small town was under 3,000 ft. It would have 2 aisles. Think lots of crafts and kits, some board games . Lots of rainy weather ideas to keep the brats busy so you could do some serious BelAir smoking and Irish Coffee drinking.

In the deficit column, you could stuck with a ton of crappy latchkit loom pot holders, handpainted ugly knick knacks.

As a little gayling I would ride with my mother (who didn’t drive) on the city bus to downtown on a shopping trip with her. Maybe four blocks of the main drag had the stores she wanted to shop. A couple of times we stopped at the Woolworth’s lunch counter to eat. I would order a cheese sandwich on toast (not grilled) with a limeade. I felt so grown up and sophisticated.

You were fortunate,R63.I used an empty cigar box.

No, Kresge, Woolworths, Kress and the like were much nicer and had more and better than Dollar Tree.

Most also had small lunch counters that were fun to eat at

Laverne) Why are we in this store? We can't afford anything on here.

Shirley) We'll just look around find the latest styles and trends, then go down to Woolworths and buy the same exact thing

I had wondered when that Woolworths in Times Square closed. Ate at the lunch counter after This Is Cinerama at the Ziegfeld. Middle aged waitress in white waitress dresses.

Right next to the great Criterion movie theater. My favorite along with the Rivoli. Times Square was taking a steep header into dissolution but it was the end of a New York I wish I had known but was too young to have really experienced. Still it was the real New York and far better than what exists today. It's hard to believe the pimps and prostitutes were so much better than the wretched tourists of today but they were harmless blue haired matrons in comparison.

I remember the huge Woolworth's at the foot of Powell and Market (where you catch the cable car) in SF.

Pencil boxes seem highly inefficient. What is pressed ham? Ham salad sound gross, but ham salad and egg salad together sounds super gross.

I suspect pressed ham is a spam like meat and gelatin combination.

Watch “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” OP. Holly and Paul (Audrey and George), after browsing and perusing various items, end up stealing Halloween masks from a representative Manhattan Five and Dime.

Spiced ham, fat, sugar and salt, was the Nectar of the Gods. SPAM! The local Woolworth's in rural NC presented it in salads and in sandwiches on white bread with mayo. My grandmother would take me there as a special treat until that unpleasantness in Greensboro.

In Dallas in the 70s, we had some of the national chains - Woolworth's, TG&Y, maybe Ben Franklin. We also had a couple of local chains - M. E. Moses and Mott's.

When the Kresge's in my home town was replaced by a K-Mart, all of the ladies who worked at the Kresge lunch counter moved to the little restaurant inside the K-Mart and continued with business as usual. Right up until the K-Mart closed about 10 years ago you could still get wonderful homemade chicken salad sandwiches, grill cheeses, and all the other stuff off the old menu. It ws the best kept secret in town, and I think the only reason they kept it open was so the employees would have a place to eat lunch--any business above and beyond that was just gravy as far as management was concerned.

Shoplifting scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s had a small facsimile of a five-and-dime.

I used to take the bus downtown with my grandmother a lot. She didn't drive, but the bus went right downtown. We would sometimes go to one of the two more glitzy tea rooms in town, but often we would stop at Woolworth's. I liked it when we went there because it meant she'd take me to the record store. I remember buying my first Supremes 45 on one of these trips, "Where Did Our Love Go?" I didn't like Woolworth's record department. They were months behind.

^ In case it's not clear, the record store was across the street from Woolworth's. I didn't buy records at Woolworth's. We would just stop there for notions and cheeseburgers.

Audrey Hepburn tooting on that toy horn and then putting it back always bothered me.

I contrak wiss the Wolewerths for my jewlery but they close-up me!

Aren’t true five and dimes much older? Like from the 40s or 50s at the latest and not necessarily chains. I think places like Woolworth’s were more expensive by the 60s and 70s.

They go back much further than that, R94. Woolworth's was started in 1879, Kresge's in 1899, and Grant's in 1906. 5¢ in those days is equivalent to about $1 now. Of course even then many items cost more than 5¢

Yes, Woolworth's was the innovator. Until then, all the goods were behind a counter or out back and a sales clerk had to get it for you. Having products on open counters so the customer could sort through and pick the one they wanted was huge.

Eventually large flat counters gave way to tall shelving and narrow aisles.

Does anyone remember Nichols?

There was a McCrory store in downtown Brooklyn. When my mother took me shopping for school clothes and school supplies, we always stopped in McCrory or Woolworth for lunch. I remember a dessert of a square of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream served on waffles that I believe McCrory offered. The thought of the soggy waffles now makes me gag, but they were coveted by me as a kid.

The pudding at Kresge's was divine. Yeah it was out of a can but it was the best.

I remember the mom-and-pop five-and-dimes, with the wooden floors...they were so much fun, mysterious, you didn't know what you'd find--a kite, a yo-yo, you never knew!

The last 5 and 10s I remember visiting, in the 1980s, were Ben Franklin. Special mention to Mapes, on the Main Line. Even then, it seemed like a timeslip, with its creaky wooden floors, penny candy, and balsa-wood toys. It hung on for a while longer, but not in its original form. I believe they tried renovating it after I moved away*.

Yes, I know what you mean, R86.

We'll have no smart remarks from you, mister!

Woolworth closed their US 5&10 stores in the 1990s, but spun off the sporting goods dept, the remaining profitable part of the business, into the Foot Locker stores.

Imagine the marriage of a shrunken JCPenney and a spruced up country store

OMG, the monster is approaching Times Square and just ate a policeman who ran out of bullets! The terrified populace is screaming and running!

They sold all kinds of cheap junk. They were ancestors of department stores and the last Woolworth's--usually in small town malls were almost as large as a Target. Kresge sold a lot of the same house brand crap that was for sale in KMart. They were good places to get plain, cheap clothing; those awful gerbils and parakeets, artificial flowers; waxy chocolate; inedible "ham"; stuff for birthday parties; school supplies; one of the few places with year round toy departments. Discount stores like KMart put them out of business---now this stiff is parcelled out among WalMart, Dollar Stores, and places like Party City or JoAnn Fabrics/Crafts. If stuff is still bought by people, then there is some place that sells it.

Bill sure likes his organ!

When a new Woolworth's came to my town many years ago, they gave out free goldfish on opening day. My brother got one. It died shortly after he brought it home.

Our TG&Y store had the best air conditioning in town. A column of cool air came down from a hole cut in the ceiling. On a hot summer day you could stand right under it, and it was heavenly.

I loved spending time at Woolworth’s when I was a kid. I was particularly fascinated by all the gadgets and doodads in the stationery department: compasses, oak tag, hole punchers, reinforcements, protractors, pencil cases with sliding covers, red rubber book straps and on and on. I adore getting ready for the start of a new school year by setting up my loose-leaf notebook with its tabbed sections and covering my textbooks with shiny new book covers. OMG.

I think the comparisons to Dollar Tree or Target are lame. The Five and Dime stores had personality. Plus, the help was knowledgeable and eager to help. Target May seem big, bigger than those old stores, but I often fail to find what I want there. As for Dollar Tree, the staff is surly and the aisles are filled with open boxes and the quality sucks.

The applauding "audience" in that Woolworth commercial at R108 is like a scene from a horror movie.

Sorry about R106. That reply showed up both here and in the thread where I originally posted it.

[quote] I was particularly fascinated by all the gadgets and doodads in the stationery department: compasses, oak tag, hole punchers, reinforcements, protractors, pencil cases with sliding covers, red rubber book straps and on and on. I adore getting ready for the start of a new school year by setting up my loose-leaf notebook with its tabbed sections and covering my textbooks with shiny new book covers. OMG.

R111, I adored that part too. Unfortunately, the fun was spoiled once school actually started.

My father managed a G.C. Murphy Co 5¢ and Dime store in the 50's through the 80's. He would go in on Sundays to take care of paper work and would take me along and I could play with the toys while he worked as the store was never open on Sundays.

I would say the closest thing to most 5¢ and Dime stores today is probably a Dollar General, however the 5¢ and Dime stores often had bulk candy and often a lunch counter. I can't tell you how often I would eat some candy while the store was close on Sundays. At one point they put locks on the restroom and you had to put a dime in the lock to use the restroom, my father said per square foot the restrooms were the most profitable area of the store.

R114, you never have to apologize for a monster!

[quote]Any Canadians here? Is Bi-way still in business? I’m an ex-pat.

I'm pretty sure they're all gone now.

The one in my hometown closed down around 20 years ago.

Was there a difference between Woolworth's and Woolco?

From reading these posts, it's clear that one's recollections of the 5 and 10 Cent Stores is wholly dependent on your age. During the 50s and 60s, they had a great deal more refinement than they did in later years and were beginning to disappear. But then, so did our society. It also helps to draw upon childhood memories. Those are the best.

Thanks for your recollections, R120. Bulk candy. I had completely forgotten that was a staple of the 5 and 10 Cent Stores. As soon as I read those words, it all flooded back. I can see exactly how the bins were laid out and all the candy, too. Malt balls. Jaw breakers. Chocolate covered raisins. Chocolate covered peanuts. Saltwater taffy. Those disgusting orange marshmallow peanuts. I honestly had not thought of those in decades. At the G.C. Murphy in my neighborhood, the candy bins lined two different adjoining aisles in the store, with the the sales person occupying an internal aisle between them. Several large fan scales were there to weigh the candy. At the end of the aisle was the caramel corn being made in huge copper tubs and stirred with large wooden paddles. The smell was wonderful.

The K-Marts and Targets of the world are much bigger affairs than most Woolworth's or Murphy's. Lamston's was a favorite in NYC. There was one on Sixth Avenue at 55th Street until the very late 1980s or early 90s.

The McCrory store in my hometown held on until the mid 1990s, I loved going there with my grandmother. I'd compare them to Dollar General or Family Dollar, only nicer, even in their decline.

R123, they had the same parent company but I believe Woolco was their attempt at a bigger scale department store similar to Kmart or Target.

Yes, R68, I remember them well, although our family collected Blue Chip stamps rather than S&H green stamps. I remember lovingly pasting them into the booklets.

All the necessities of life!

We had a Hested, Ben Franklin and Woolworth store in the town I grew up in.

Thanks for this great thread, OP and all the knowledgeable posters who have contributed!

Reading these posts prompted me to finally download a Kindle book I'd purchased months ago but hadn't done anything with. It's "Remembering Woolworth's: A Nostalgic History of the World's Most Famous Five-and-Dime."

So far, it's interesting and fun. The Prologue is subtitled "Nickel Parakeets and Grilled Cheese: Welcome to the World's Most Famous Five-and-Dime."

My mother collected both S&H Green Stamps and Blue Chip stamps -- one was available in Mich and the other in Calif (don't remember which was where) and we moved from east to west when I was about 10. I helped her paste the stamps into the little booklets that were redeemed for merchandise -- right after I graduated from high school, she let me have enough of those booklets to get a really nice square card table (made of wood instead of metal!), which I still have some 50 years later.

No. Five & dimes had a book section.

[quote]Was there a difference between Woolworth's and Woolco?

The name.

Regardless of what they called themselves they still paid their female employees less than the men.

I remember Triple S Blue Stamps. In second grade, I wanted to trade them in for a "diamond" bracelet.

And they said they had no idea.

Love that story about the card table, R131

Fannie Hurst wrote a novel called "Five and Ten" published in 1929, which was made into a movie with the same title in 1931, starring Leslie Howard and Marion Davies (Wm Randolph Hearst's mistress). It was a potboiler and great soap opera -- I have no idea how true it may or may not have been about the real Woolworth family (which included Barbara Hutton, one of Cary Grant's wives), but the book is fun to read and the movie is fun to watch.

They had an art section in Woolworth. I remember buying my nephew drawing books (empty pages) and crayons & colored pencils for Christmas. There were paintbrushes and small jars of paint.( I didn’t buy any of those - he was only 6). Picture frames. Poster paper.Decals. A cross between the stuff you’d find at Staples & at Michaels. Stuff for kids doing school projects and stuff amateur artists would use.

I remember they had a sewing section that had all kinds of threads , patches to sew over holes in pants. There were rolls of little lace borders, velour borders, etc. It seemed all women in my grandmother’s generation could sew, darn and knit. By the time my mother’s generation came along it wasn’t such a thing anymore. They were the “wash and wear” generation.

Thanks, R135 -- it really is a good card table, I wonder if this kind of thing is even made any more. And it was free!

One thing I don't believe anyone has mentioned yet was that Woolworth's, Kresge's, etc., were typical hangouts for high-school kids in the 1950s and 1960s. Especially if you had to meet someone, you could browse around while waiting. There was always something to look at, examine, and so on.

It was usual to do some shoplifting, too, as in the aforementioned Breakfast At Tiffany's movie.

There's a song about these Five and Dimes in the 1951 musical Seventeen, "Weatherbee's Drug Store."

Ages ago in midtown Atlanta , there was a Woolworths at Ansley Mall. Then the epicenter of gay ATL. I would always see aging drag queens shoplifting bras , lipstick and eyelashes in there.

[QUOTE]Bulk candy. I had completely forgotten that was a staple of the 5 and 10 Cent Stores. As soon as I read those words, it all flooded back. I can see exactly how the bins were laid out and all the candy, too. Malt balls. Jaw breakers. Chocolate covered raisins. Chocolate covered peanuts. Saltwater taffy. Those disgusting orange marshmallow peanuts. I honestly had not thought of those in decades.

I remember the candy, especially those vile circus peanuts, but what always captivated me as a child was the white metal display case full of assorted nuts. I forget how it worked exactly, but there was a big heat lamp that kept the nuts warm, and some sort of slowly revolving circular tray that displayed them. If you wanted them, the sales lady fill either a tiny paper cup or a small bag. They were expensive as Hell, and I was never allowed to buy them. The first time I had my own money I promptly blew it on cashews, and I was shocked by how few cashews I got.

r123

Woolworth was first and they wanted to expand into a bigger dept store. So they made Woolco. Same with SS Kresge, which became K-Mart. And a bunch of other companies did this too.

In the late 60s / early 70s you had: WT Grant, K-Mart, Woolco, Zayre, and a few other bottom tiers like Shoppers World and Community (more local stores). Then you had EJ Korvettes which was one step slightly above those formerly listed.

Target was also lower tier back then in many regions. It reemerged in the late 80s as an upscale K-Mart, while stores like Zayre and Venture were declining.

I once stole a single piece of root beer barrel penny candy from one of those bins and, within , was so fearful that I would die before I could confess my sin and be relegated to burn in hell for all eternity that I ran all the way home, took money out of my piggy bank, ran back, bought a quarter pound of candy, and promptly threw a root beer barrel back into the bin.

Your parents raised you right, r143.

Top Value Stamps. I remember the Top Value redemption store was next door to G.C. Murphy. If you licked enough stamps, the world was at your feet.

Let's do the Time Warp again.

I remember Woolworth's right before it filed for chapter 11, so apathy had set in at that point. Crap in the aisles, dirty floors, messy shelves.

We had a local 5 and 10 which was called Green's. It had a lunch counter when you first walked in and I think they onpy sold hot dogs. My mom never wanted me to eat from there and I never knew why. Thinking back to how dirty the store was I can only imagine how gross it was behind the counter.

[quote]We had a local 5 and 10 which was called Green's.

If it was H.L. Green's, it wasn't local but rather part of a national five-and-dime chain. Taking Amtrak from D.C. to New York, I always noticed an "H.L. Green Co." ghost sign painted on the back of an old building somewhere between Newark and New York. I think it's still there.

Back in the mid-80s, out of curiosity I went into our downtown Woolworth's on a Saturday afternoon. Near the front of the store, there were 2 or 3 old lady clerks chewing the fat, who barely acknowledged me. I wandered back through the aisles, which were very well stocked, neat, clean and organized. There weren’t any other clerks around, which made sense when I realized I was the only person in the whole store. It was like it was frozen in time. I remember they had a nice display of Harlequin dish ware, which had been reissued by Homer Laughlin for Woolworth's 100th anniversary. A couple of months later, they closed the store.

I briefly worked at a Woolco in the late '70s. I still have my name tag.

R148, it definitely wasn't HL Green. I think it was shortened from Greenberg's or something like that.

There was a chain of five-and-dime stores in the Northeast called New England Stores that I enjoyed browsing in as a kid.

Five and dimes were more fun than Target. Most had a lunch counter. Fiestaware was sold there.

R143,After that wonderful act of contrition. You became a homosexual cum dump. Even exchange there ?

r123, see r38

r90 We must be about the same age (66 here.) That was one of my first records as well.

r131 We had both Blue Chip and S&H Green in California, but the former was more prevalent.

r142 I'm pretty sure Kmart predated Woolco. Woolco was Woolworth's (failed) attempt to catch up in the discount store game.

Did 5 & Dimes every join the herd of stores opening the first shopping malls?

it was a more frugal time, so the shit that was sold was practical...not so much random useless crap.....and there were many Mom and Pops that really catered to local needs and knew what would sell.

One woman's odyssey. Will she buy the percolator? Will she find the bobbers? Her husband told her to pick up bobbers......

Our downtown Woolworth's closed and they opened a new store in the mall when it was built in the seventies. Same layout, except linoleum floors instead of hardwood.

R159, the first enclosed mall in Texas, Big Town Mall, opened in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite in 1959. One of its original stores was a Woolworth. Later, a Woolco store was built across the parking lot on the mall periphery.

Here's a blog post about Woolco with several pictures of what a typical store looked like.

The Belle Meade Luncheonette at R160 apparently specializes in sundries. I don't have a clue as to where I can find sundries these days.

[quote]I don't have a clue as to where I can find sundries these days.

Right next to the "notions." Anyone know wtf notions were?

[quote][R90] We must be about the same age (66 here.) That was one of my first records as well.

I'm 68. I had just started buying records the year before, in the spring of 1963. "I Will Follow Him" was my first. Then the Ronettes, the Crystals, Lesley Gore, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons. Then came November. And then that Christmas. And in 1964, the Beatles and Motown.

R167 obviously does not sew her own caftans.

My mother's family was a Woolworth family. Her siblings and cousins and aunts all worked at the Woolworth's in Newton Center, Ma. We got all the comics we wanted when their covers were ripped off to send back for a refund.

For years I wore these wedge sandals they sold in different colors.

We got our creche there. Our ornaments. Our Christmas candy. And Petey our parakeet.

Five and dime chain stores over time morphed into newer, larger variety stores in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The Woolworth’s we went to when I was in high school was the newer version and not the same as the stores from my early childhood. It seems that most people are too young to have experienced actual five and dime stores or else where they lived they didn’t have any existing stores from the early 1900s still around.

In the early 2000s, I traveled to Orangeburg, SC for an event at South Carolina State University. I was early so I decided to walk around the downtown. While the major 5&10 chains had closed by that point, the town had two large locally owned and operated ones in the middle of downtown. It was clear they were former chain stores, that some local had decided to keep in business. It was amazing, like walking back in time. I was so amazed by the experience, I was late for the event I was to attend.

Orangeburg, is a fascinating town, anyway. It was the site of a major late civil rights event, the Orangeburg Massacre. It is surprising it didn't occur sooner, considering the town is a black college town that is home to two rather large HBCUs, the public South Carolina State University and the private Claflin University. Also, if anyone ever gets a chance to go there the Edisto Memorial Gardens is amazingly beautiful.

[quote]Did 5 & Dimes every join the herd of stores opening the first shopping malls?

I'm pretty sure there variety stores in most early malls. I know the one that opened in my area in the late '60s had an S.H. Kress store (complete with "Whirly-Q Lunchette!") as an original tenant.

Kress Whirly-Q Lunchette Menu

Kress's in Berkeley, CA. Note that they were not just a five-and-dime -- but they went up to 25 cents! I've seen this architecture in other cities ... presumably other Kress locations at one time.

Link to an old thread about drugstore eateries ... also discusses some of the five-and-dime lunch counters.

R160 the gladiolas are to die for!

I could really go for a Woolworth's Tulip Sundae right about now.

The immense fortunes built on 5 an Dime. Bought Barbara Woolworth Hutton a lifetimes of fabulous cock and heartbreak.

I would say that the 5 and Dime stores were more like Dollar Tree, or Five Under today.

The Five & Dimes of my youth in the 50s and 60s were absolutely nothing like Dollar Tree. Kids don't go into Dollar Tree and have fun scouting out the aisles for fun things. That's what we did in Five & Dimes back in the day.

For some reason we in beautiful downtown Burbank (as Johnny Carson identified us with suitable irony) called Woolworth's and Newberry's "The dime store." We never called it a 5 & dime. I suppose we were very sophisticated way back then (yeah, right--everybody I went to school with came from Iowa to work at the Lockheed factory after the war). Did anybody else called it "The Dime Store."? Maybe that was only on our street? Or only my mother (who came from NY).

R183 That was the term in my town in South Carolina, as well.

I was raised in the midwest and they were always referred to as dime stores. In my experience, in the midwest, in the early 1960's, phrases like "Five and Ten," or "Five and Dime," were already old-fashioned. They were all dime stores.

It rubs the notion on the skin.

[quote]beautiful downtown Burbank (as Johnny Carson identified us with suitable irony)

Wasn't that Rowan and Martin (Laugh In)?

R90 Ahem. Your town had not one but two glitzy tea rooms? And your grandmother took you. My, she was progressive.

Mercy, it’s getting warm here.

Oh yes, in Georgia it was always colloquially known as "the dime store". "Five & Dime" was simply the official term.

R187 They both did it. Laugh In was first, however.

In Atlanta we still have Richards Variety Store in Peachtree Battle Shopping Center & another branch in Midtown. They've always been known as "Richard's Five & Dime". Been around for 68 years and still going strong. You never know what good buys you'll find when you go in there.

R187 called it. Laugh In used it first. But Carson, who filmed the Tonight Show at NBC Burbank, adopted it and used it all the time. My childhood friend and I moved away after high school and we always said it. Burbank was an unattractive hick town until it started to gentrify a bit in the '90s ('cause it had cheap rent, so became desirable finally.) Since my folks died in the early 2000s, I no longer have any need to visit because AFAIK there is still no there there.

Now I want to see Burbank.

[quote]Laugh In used it first. But Carson, who filmed the Tonight Show at NBC Burbank, adopted it and used it all the time.

Much of Carson's "Tonight Show" humor was "adopted" from other comics. Aunt Blabby was Jonathan Winters' Maude Frickett. Art Fern and his Tea Time Movie was an homage, if you want to use that word, to a routine Jackie Gleason did first on his variety show.

Carson owed his whole career to Jack Benny.

The closest thing today would be a 99 Cent store.

Houston had a great variety store in the Rice Village shopping area. It held on at least until the 90s, narrow, and crammed with odd stuff. I always stopped by when I shopped in the village. But the retail real estate got too expensive and a lot of the eccentric shops that made shopping the village fun disappeared. Now it's a mix of chain stores and expensive boutiques. Everything changes.

Johnny Carson probably wouldn't have argued with you. He wrote a paper in college analyzing Jack Benny's routines.

Our local Woolworths did have a small food counter in the front - stuff like hot dogs, baked soft pretzels, popcorn, etc... but they also had a restaurant next door called Harvest House. It was sort of a buffet style place.

By the mid 90's though, the store was barren, with hardly any employees working there at any given time. You could literally just grab something off the shelves and walk out without paying for it, and nobody would notice (or care for that matter).

We had a Ben Franklin near us too, about a mile away. I would walk over there frequently with some pocket change to buy random toys and candy they had in bins by the checkout counter.

My old neighborhood had a Kresge’s and a Woolworth’s. Each had a lunch counter. I think Woolworth’s had a string of little blown up balloons over the lunch counter. You picked a balloon and popped it. Inside was the price you’d pay for a banana split. Ranged from a penny to 99 cents.

The big department stores were mainly interested in selling the big ticket items, so they left the little stuff (notions and sundries) to the five-and-dime stores.

Notions.

(The proper storage for notions is an empty round can that originally contained Danish butter cookies.)

The Woolworth's in my hometown closed in 1970, but the building stood vacant for many, many years. It was finally demolished several years ago and replaced by a mixed-use complex. The local paper published a photo of the long-neglected interior just before it was torn down, the soda fountain and stools still intact.

I remember my mother, for years after it closed, saying how much she missed Woolworth's because she could buy things there she "couldn't find anywhere else." By the time it closed, the other downtown dime stores, J.J. Newberry and W.T. Grant, were also shuttered.

Oil cloth! The dime stores were the best place to buy oil cloth.

What did you use oil cloth for, r208?

I didn't use it for anything. I was a child.

But I loved the patterns and the bright colors and I loved that unlike other fabrics, it could get wet and be wiped clean.

As an adult, I don't think I've ever purchased it. As a child, it was terrific.

[quote]The big department stores were mainly interested in selling the big ticket items, so they left the little stuff (notions and sundries) to the five-and-dime stores.

Before they started getting rid of unprofitable departments, major department stores had EVERYTHING, including notions. They had books, TVs, furniture, etc. The Emporium in downtown SF even had a department for stamp collectors.

Department stores were so much fun, r211.

Oil cloth was put on kitchen tables and patio picnic tables. By the time i was an adult and considered it's kitsch value, I could only find great patterns in Parisian five and dimes. Everything was hideous in the USA except truly vintage rolls found here and there such as an old corner of a soon to disappear shop. The Paris five and dimes declined as well, and are now gone, and one can probably only find nostalgic recreations in the kind of "crap fetish" design stores I do not enjoy.

Something different, but I can't seem to recall how or in what way. Sorry - I just don't remember. What was the question?

Y'all realize this thread is equivalent to my great grandma's stories about the June Strawberry Social? That time she got sick on lemonade and whipped cream.

I was hoping to learn something about Woolworths, but had to give up.

There was a huge 2 level S. S. Kresge in Atlanta's Lenox Square Mall back in the 60s & 70s. Only Five & Dime I ever saw with an escalator.

[quote]Y'all realize this thread is equivalent to my great grandma's stories about the June Strawberry Social? That time she got sick on lemonade and whipped cream. I was hoping to learn something about Woolworths, but had to give up.

We're simply heartbroken that we disappointed you.

I wanted to learn R217, but grew bored of all the old men posts, classifying and reclassifying things. That's part of the reason gay men were thought to be mentally ill. It's arrested sexual development mixed with compulsive obsessive/compulsive behavior that gives no pleasure in itself, only in the chasing of completion. The perfect way to see and classify everyone and thing and experience. We younger gay men don't suffer so much like this. Observant and smart, but not nuts. But then you speak for ALL R217?

Your "mob" of ancient white gay men, who refuse to die. AKA the DL. Go back to the five and dime.

Did Woolworth's sell rat poison, with which we could dose r218's hot fudge sundae while he sits at the lunch counter?

If any of you are from NE Ohio, you might recall Jewel Mart. They only had one of each item on the shelves for display purposes, and you had to walk around with a clip board to write down what you wanted. When it came time to check out, they would retrieve your items from the back of the house, and send them down a conveyor belt to the cashier.

That's like Service Merchandise or Best Products. A catalog showroom. There were many other regional variations -- W. Bell in DC is one I remember.

Probably some of your relatives tried to do exactly that to some of mine R219! I am a hot fudge Sunday.

I apologize for being so rude to the group.

I hope R222 R218 is a white guy trolling. I don't want to believe the dismal possibility a young gay POC thinks old white guys are his enemy and should be shat on like this. None of us are THAT old, my dear R218! And if we are old, we bravely made our lives in the 70's and 80's when it wasn't a cakewalk. We survived AIDS and many of us fought for treatment and dignity for HIV people and for all lesbians and gays and trans too, back then. We really were all in it together and if a young POC wants to rewrite white gay elders as the enemy, it can only be shitty schooling, poor knowledge of history, and possibly low IQ.

I agree about the old Woolworth's, Grant's, and such stores having a bit of character to them. Nothing major, but certainly more than the vapid dollar stores.

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