Piggly Wiggly Sewing Kit

Posted on April 9, 2020 by admin

Something new on the Weather Underground forecast page for my area this Maundy Thursday morning. A screen shot:

Obviously a day to stay in if you can, for a number of reasons. Back to posting on Easter Monday. A good Easter to all.

There are many oddities around the house. Why have it any other way? Such as a Piggly Wiggly sewing kit, or you could call it a needle kit. Scanned here open, with the back on the left and the front on the right. Or reverse and observe.

Inside the kit. Some needles still in place. A threader, too.My guess is that my grandmother picked it up at a San Antonio Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s, early ’60s at the latest. Most of the time I believe she shopped at the nearby Handy-Andy in Alamo Heights, but she must have occasionally patronized Piggly Wiggly, which existed in South Texas at the time (but no more: HEB is king in that part of the country).

At some point, maybe after grandma died, my mother removed it to her house; and now that’s what I’ve done. I can date it with some certainty to that decade because of a few details. Green Stamps don’t narrow it down that much, since they were around from the 1930s to the ’80s, but I smile at the mention of them anyway.

On the inside it says: Frank Kraus, Los Angeles 36, which puts it before zip codes and during postal zones (1943-63). Since the kit was made in West Germany, that puts it after the war, in fact after the formation of the BRD in 1949. Must have been a product of the postwar recovery, when West German industry was making whatever they could for whomever they could, just as Japanese industry did at the time.

As for Frank Kraus, I’d guess he was the importer. Possibly, but only possibly, this fellow. Or him, though he left California at some point. A little looking around, such as at Esty, reveals that Frank Kraus, whoever he was and wherever he rests now, had his name on other small sewing kits from West Germany.

Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Nashville & Squeezebox Books and Music, Evanston

Posted on February 9, 2020 by admin

I have envelopes containing paper debris — keepsakes, if you’re in a generous mood — from various periods in my life. They aren’t quite rigorously organized, since that wouldn’t fit my temperament, but most of the items evoke a certain bit of the past.

Such as the pleasant times I spent at Davis-Kidd in Nashville in the mid-1980s. The store gave away bookmarks. I still have one.

There are few pleasures like browsing a bookstore, especially an independent, intelligently stocked one, as Davis-Kidd was. It wasn’t enough to browse, either. I also bought books there.

Of course I have to report that the store is gone. About nine years gone, at least the one in Nashville. Nine years ago, the betting money was on the complete disappearance of the independent bookstore. Fortunately, that hasn’t quite happened. I do my part when I can, though such bookstores, new or used, are thin on the ground in the suburbs around me.

But I still find them further away. Last summer, for instance, I chanced across Squeezebox Books and Music when I was in Evanston.

I like a shop that has non-English versions of Calvin & Hobbes for sale.

I didn’t buy any books there — I don’t buy as many as I used to, since I have so many — but I did buy postcards.

Watch the Reindeer Melt! Days of Fun

Posted on January 22, 2020 by admin

Ann brought this to my attention earlier this month, at a crafts superstore I rarely go to, but from which she wanted something. On display was an item that seemed to be sold for Christmas, but which by January was at a deep discount.

One of the stranger holiday items I saw this season, or any holiday season, really. A reindeer figure. Build it! Watch it melt! Watch it melt? Watch it melt?

Walmart’s marketing text about the item is positively demented, which I guess is fitting: “Build the reindeer and watch it melt magically! Fun for days. Completely reusable. Keep building and watch it melt over and over! Perfect stocking stuffer! Miracle Melters! Reindeer! Build it and Watch it Melt!”

Sure enough, someone has made a video about this — toy. I can’t say that I watched all of it, skipping around some, but the point of the item still eludes me. Do reindeer melt in dark Sámi folktales?

Christmas Tree Shopping Over the Years

Posted on December 12, 2019 by admin

Various sources said there was a full moon out there on Thursday the 12th, but clouds obscured it. Still, for December, the day was a warmish (40s F.) and Friday will be likewise, they say. Time to acquire a Christmas tree.

The tree-selling business where we’ve bought maybe a half dozen trees over the last decade has vanished. During the warm months, the lot featured a nursery, next to a private dwelling where the proprietors lived. In December, it had a large stock of Christmas trees. Got one there just last year.

But not quite every year during the 2010s. One year we went to a church lot some miles north of home; can’t remember why. Another year, we found a tree at a parking lot of a downmarket retail property. And yet another time, when I waited too long, a tree came from the last-resort expedient of a big DIY store.

That reminded me of the time in my youth, sometime in the early ’70s, when we didn’t get a tree until Dec. 23. Pickings were slim.

Then there was the time in London when we had no intention of getting a tree to decorate the flat we’d rented in East Ealing. A few days before Christmas, however, we were returning to the flat from the train station, and spotted a small tree abandoned and naked on the sidewalk. Maybe three feet tall. So we took it back and somehow made it stand up and decorated our serendipitous tree with something or other. Pieces of paper, ribbons, I forget what.

Now the lot we’ve shopped at over the years is empty and all of the accouterments of the nursery — the large shed, mostly — are gone. There are no Christmas trees for sale but a sign says the house is for sale. That’s that.

No Fond Memories of Record Hole

Posted on December 11, 2019 by admin

I pinned this to the wall behind the front door today. It’ll be there until I will be obliged to take it down. Why there? Just a passing whim. I was tired of it lying around my office.
It’s a plastic bag and a relic of the 1970s or the ’80s at the latest. Not only that, a souvenir from San Antonio. At one time, Record Hole was a local chain of record stores in that city. Or so I believe.

The brand is long gone, and so far I’ve found only one trace of it online — a passing mention in an article about a different and surviving record store, as of 2016. Not that I’ve looked very hard. But Record Hole is so obscure that it didn’t even make in on this list of defunct retailers, which includes Record Bar, Record Town and Record World.

Some time ago, I picked up the bag at my mother’s house — again on a whim — and brought it back home. She’d been using it to store odds and ends. I might well have bought a record at a Record Hole and left it with her 40-odd years ago. I didn’t buy many records, but I did buy a few. Or maybe my brother Jim bought something there.

At one time, Record Hole was established enough to air local TV ads. I vaguely remember them, because they featured a primitive animated version of ’70s-record-listening dude.

Who was sitting on a record on a turntable. Trippy, man. The store’s motto, which is also on the bag but upsidedown and backwards in my picture: Whatever music plays in your head, we can put in your hand.

Plastic bags, though they may last for centuries in landfills, are notoriously ephemeral when it comes to being saved elsewhere. Sure, it’s still worthless now, but some happy descendant of mine might make a fortune off the bag in, say, the 23rd century, when the notion of plastic bags and records are historic curiosities that excite collector interest.

Neon Santa

Posted on December 2, 2019 by admin

Most of yesterday’s snow is gone. If winter were like that all the way through around here, that would suit me. Then again, that would also probably mean Texas-like summers and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet for starters, so never mind.

Christmas lights and decorations are sprouting rapidly in our neighborhood, some modest, some modestly gaudy. No one here goes for the full Griswold, or even a half or quarter Griswold.

As for Christmas in the stores, all that sprouted weeks ago. Still, sometimes I see new things. New to me, anyway. Like a Neon Santa.

Available at a warehouse store I visit sometimes. Could have been mine for about $30, but I passed on it. I also noticed that it isn’t actually neon. In our time, it’s an LED Santa.

The Ordinary Now, Retail Edition

Posted on November 20, 2019 by admin

About two weeks ago, we visited a nearby regional mall. One thing I noticed was an enormous construction site where one of the anchor tenants used to be, a department store I can’t ever remember visiting. Later I read that the site will soon be a home to a store with no connection to the rest of the mall — none casual visitors can use, anyway. It’s a brand that will probably do well there.

Inside the mall, we witnessed the last gasp of another anchor.

Last 2 Days! We had to wander through. Still for sale: large rugs, some washing machines and refrigerators, store fixtures. I actually remember buying something at this location: a lawn mower a few years ago. A Craftsman. It’s held up pretty well.

A few days ago as I looked out my office window, I noticed a delivery truck. That isn’t at all unusual, not even this particular kind of truck, but I wanted to take a picture anyway. A small urge to document the ordinary now, since it won’t last.

The deliveryman was fast, though. By the time I got my camera (phone, that is), activated the camera function, unlocked the front door, stepped outside, pointed and pushed the button, he was on his way, so the image is of an e-commerce delivery truck in motion. Maybe that’s fitting: go-go-go.

Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland

Posted on September 12, 2019 by admin

Not far south of the activity on Main Street in Frankenmuth, which is also the two-lane highway Michigan 83, is Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland. We arrived early in the afternoon on Labor Day, just as rain started to pour.

The store actually styles itself Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland, such as on this sign over one of the entrances.
No doubt the owners’ religious feelings are sincere — the Bronner family, since founder Wally Bronner died in 2008 — but my editorial instincts and experience kick in at this point, telling me not to style it that way. Allow every irregular brand-style or oddball marketing spelling and you’ll start seeing them everywhere, all the time. That would be an on-ramp to editorial perdition.

Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland asserts that it’s the world’s largest Christmas store, and I believe it. Over 50,000 items are for sale in a store of over 85,000 square feet — one and a half football fields, or about two acres — including Christmas ornaments, lights, Nativity scenes, Christmas trees, gifts, stockings, Santa paraphernalia, and other decor.

There are a lot of specialized ornaments, featuring animals, celebrities, entertainers, farm equipment, food and beverage, hobbies, hunting and fishing, music, miniatures, romantic themes, patriotism, professions, religious themes, Santas, snowmen, sports, various nationalities and much more. Something to look at everywhere you go in that store.

For nurses.
Cops.
For fans of assorted national parks.
Or turtles.
Wonder if the store stocks a gila monster ornament. If anywhere does, this place would.

If you want to be reminded of the Day of the Dead around Christmas.
Or if the King has to be part of your holiday.
I wasn’t expecting Jimi Hendrix, but there he was.

Naturally, various states and countries are represented as well.
Bronner's Christmas Wonderland That last one is the Japan-themed ornament section. The red balls in the middle feature a phonemic approximation of “Merry Christmas” in katakana.

The Chicago Main Newsstand

Posted on August 19, 2019 by admin

Early on Saturday afternoon, I saw that the Chicago Main Newsstand is open for business at the intersection of Chicago Ave. and Main St. in north suburban Evanston. (Various sources style it Chicago-Main, but not the wall outside the store.) I hadn’t been that way in a long time, or thought about the place. So if I’d had to guess beforehand, I would have said wrongly that the Internet killed it off.

The business originally dated from the 1930s. In the early ’90s, the CTA, which owned the property at the time, jacked up the rent so much that the newsstand closed. Later I read, or maybe heard, that the agency believed it could find a tenant to pay more. That was a public-be-damned sort of move, since the newsstand was popular in pre-Internet days as a source of national and international newspapers and a vast number of magazines.

Also, not only that, the move was a blunder, since for eight years, no one else wanted to be at that location at the rent the agency wanted to charge. The City of Evanston eventually bought the site and the owner of a different newsstand in Chicago had the place renovated and re-opened as a newsstand. A 2001 article in the Tribune tells the story.

I remember patronizing the former iteration occasionally in the late 1980s, when I visited Evanston often. In those days, the newsstand featured a mix of out-of-town newspapers and many, many magazines. These days I can report fewer newspapers — an effect of the Internet, certainly — but the same inexhaustible variety of magazines. The market for paper magazines is still alive.

High Summer Hiatus

Posted on June 26, 2019 by admin

Saw a few fireflies the other day, a certain sign of that nebulous period, high summer. The days might be getting shorter, but you don’t notice that yet — like the long moment at the top of ballistic trajectory. Back to posting around July 7.

Usually I rely on rain to wash my car or, if absolutely necessary, a hosing down on a warm day. But after our recent summertime jaunt to central Illinois-Indiana, enough bugs had met their insectoid maker against the leading edge of my car that I ponied up for an automated car wash. Half price ($5), though, since I had a coupon.

I find the journey through the car wash, at less than two minutes, visually and sonically interesting. I get that for my money, besides the removal of bug splatter.

So I held my camera as steady as possible during the splashing and blooping and hissing and flapping, along with elements of a minor light show.

The dog spent some time this morning trading insults with a resident squirrel. At least that’s how I want to think of it. The dog spotted a squirrel in the major back yard tree around 9 and immediately started looking up and whining at it, as she often does. Soon the squirrel was making its own noise, something like a duck with laryngitis.

Age has slowed her (the dog) down a little, but not yet when it comes to guarding the back yard against other creatures. Earlier this year, she spent time trying to scratch through the deck to reach what I suspect was a brood of possums. They seem to be gone now, since that dog behavior has stopped for now.

Chanced on a site called Yarn the other day that purports to offer a search “by word or phrase for TV, movies, and music clips.” So I decided to test it.

Why that phrase? Just popped into my head like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Retail