Our Sears was two floors, a basement and the main floor. But the interesting thing was it was one of only 3 buildings with an escalator. The other two were a bank and the airport.Yep, as a kid I've eaten at lunch counters in Woolworth's, Kmart and Sears.
I spent a lot of time at the HUGE three floor Sears store next to our neighborhood.
It was a hangout for us kids, they had an arcade and cafeteria which kept us busy.
In the '70's and '80's our Woolworth's store, which was right smack downtown, had a lunch counter with some pretty good deals. But, let's take a ride on the wayback machine to 1948. Notice there are no hamburgers on this menu.
View attachment 644418
Yup. Kmart was our nearest place to go to goof off. The cafeteria was in the back and they had the best icees! We rode our bikes through a 55+ trailer park to get there, outrunning the security guy on his golf cart . The store was always air conditioned, cool toys to play with, and moving the blue light special cart was like a special ops mission...I ate many a ham sandwich from Kmart growing up, 10 for a $1.00 was a common price lol
Sounds fun. I wish it was still like that. I loved models big-time like you. I have 4 teenagers and I'm sure they've never experienced that.......I had a paper route as a kid, '64-'67. Once I collected the subscription money and paid my bill, I had three stops to spend my own money.
First was Woolworth's. Sitting at the counter, ordering a sandwich and coke, then being served made me feel like a grownup. I remember the ham salad and egg salad sandwiches because my mom never made those.
Second was Ben Franklin's 5 & Dime to buy a new plane or car model, including Testor's paint if I needed some.
Third was Thrifty drug stores to get a cylindrical scoop of ice cream on a sugar cone. If I didn't find a model at Ben Franklin's, Thrifty's had a good selection.
Four years. Same thing every month. I had shelves of model cars, a few Navy ships, and a bedroom ceiling full of military model planes hanging from either sewing thread or fishing line.
Old memories still feel like they didn't happen that long ago.