Ah, Woolworth's...
I remember every Woolworth's, no matter how small the town it was in, always had either one of those big, chained down binders with coins in these display cards in them, or one of those glass-topped machines with the trays that revolved up or down at the press of a button so you could see all the coins in the machine.
It was like a flame to a moth, as far as I was concerned -- every trip in there meant checking it out to see if there was anything new in there.
They also always had a good stamp department, too. All stocked by Harris. Albums, "Honor Bilt" packets of stamps, and the ubiquitous garishly orange "Big Bag of World-Wide Stamps".
Dead center in every Woolworth's was the candy counter. And it was ALWAYS staffed, too. And more often than not, there was usually a huge 50 pound bar of Hershey's chocolate somewhere in the display cases.
Over to your right, you would be able to hear the squawk of budgies in the pet department. If you went over there, you would be able to see a three or four dozen of them in cages, right across from a wall of fish tanks containg tropical fish. That was as exotic as pets got in those days.
By the time I discovered Woolworth's, we no longer had them in Canada. By that time, they had all morphed into Woolco Stores, which were kind of a lower-grade
K-mart, more like a department store. Woolworth's were only to be found on our trips to Bellingham or Seattle (we lived outside of Vancouver, BC then). If it was summertime, and we had gone back east to Fort Frances, Ontario (our hometown) to visit my grandparents, a short trip across the bridge and through US Customs would bring us to Woolworth's on the main drag of International Falls, MN.
The picture is from 1954, but it looks much the same as it was about twelve years later when I "discovered" International Falls at the age of six. See the Woolworth's?
Interesting Tidbit of Trivia: Likely on the day that this picture was taken, Tammy Lavalley was probably hard at work in the Woolworth's pet department. Eventually, she would leave the Falls, and before long become Tammy Faye Bakker. And if you turned left down the street before the Woolworth's, on the left corner across the next intersection, you could drop in and fill your gas tank at the station owned by the nice man who probably had the hugest hands you ever saw before -- but Mr. Nagurski always had a smile and a joke for you whenever you dropped in.
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Posted 01/26/2009 6:20 pm
Yep, just a little more "bling" now.
