I remember sitting at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s for a lunch during afternoon shopping excursions with my aunt. Hamburger, coke and apple pie. I always felt so grown up.
Wow, this writing brought back memories. Being from Utica, I can remember going to Woolworth’s, the green army men in plastic bags, the 45’s & lp’s in the record dept. , being able to buy small turtles and plastic homes for them that had an island in the middle with a palm tree on it. It’s interesting how the mention of a place can bring back also a memory of a smell or a sound. Whenever I hear or think of Woolworth’s it’s the sound of those heavy plates & coffee cups being put into the bins to be washed from the lunch counter. Don, thanks for triggering a memory of the past!
That's really cool, Lance! You triggered a memory for me; we had one of those plastic turtle sets with a little turtle. And it was at my grandmother's so we probably did get it at the five and dime!
Every now and then I have a moment with nothing obvious to fill it with (or nothing I actively *want* to do) and I think to myself, "I should go and read an older essay from Don, from before he and I were friends!" Today was one of those days.
Thanks for this piece of your history! I too have only a very vague notion of what Woolworth's was, and probably would have said the same thing as the coffee shop owner you were speaking with.
Foot Locker, eh? I could have sworn that name was around in the 90s...who knows (I'm feeling too lazy to look it up myself).
Favorite part?
"I quit eight months later when Mr. B went on vacation and Winnie became mean in both public and private."
Thanks, Mike. I love it when you find a line you like! I think of you sometimes when I'm editing a sentence. In fact, today I changed a word phrase in a sentence and thought, "Ooh, Mike's gonna like that!" (The essay I'm releasing tomorrow)
‘My’ woolworths was on main street in Brockton. I didn’t work there, but it was a regular stop when we would take the bus downtown, hang around in the music shops until they kicked us out, maybe caught a kids matinee at the colonial. Completely carefree and safe.
Actually West Bridgewater, but nobody but another south shore kid knows where that is :-). Are there any woolworths still in business? I’ll guess not: gone the way of Howard Johnsons and penny candy.
Woolworths, now Foot Locker, completely divested of its original stores. There are Woolworth's in Mexico and in the UK and South Africa and a few other places but they are no longer (and in some cases never were) connected to the original.
We had a Woolworth's in our little NH mill town of a few thousand people. Even as I kid I thought of it as an old store, probably harkening back to the heyday of our town when it was an important stop for the milling of cloth along the Salmon Falls river. Some of the general stores one sees on Cape Cod and throughout New England remind me of mini-versions of Woolworth's. Tight aisles packed with all kinds of stuff, some practical, some whimsical. And the old, worn wooden floors.
I feel lucky to have experienced the lunch counter, though I wish I could go back and sit down for a cheeseburger and frappe one more time, and this time really take it in, lock it into my memory, knowing the experience would soon be unrepeatable (I know there are lunch counters out there somewhere. In fact, I know there is a small one at a pharmacy in Shelburne Falls.)
Hi Don, I found your Substack today by way of a comment you made to one of Diane K24’s notes.
I remember our local Woolworth store growing up as a kid in the 60’s and early 70’s. It had all the regular departments and typical layout, but was unique from the older Main Street stores in that it was located in what they use to call a “shopping center” back in the pre-mall days of Southern California.
Last spring my wife and I found ourselves driving through the town I grew up in and needing to stop for a pit stop and lunch break, exited the freeway in search of a nearby city park I remembered from my youth. Lo and behold, the shopping center was still they, albeit with a modernized look and the ubiquitous drive through Starbucks in the parking lot. And there, in the space and building shell of the old Woolworth store, in what must be the opposite of the old five-and-dime, was a Whole Paycheck. For fun and needing to pick up a few edibles for our road trip, we entered Whole Foods. As I walked the aisles, I could still visualize the store layout of the old Woolworth. I doubt a single employee in that store was born the last time I was in that building, when it was a Woolworth in 1975.
Michael, thank you for commenting and subscribing, and thanks for telling me how you found my blog. That’s always helpful to know!
That’s a good story about finding your old Woolworths, now Whole Foods! My downtown, Taunton Massachusetts, is a remnant of its former self, not for lack of trying. The Woolworth building is still there but not looking good. Lost all its architectural details. I think it’s a veteran’s center now.
My Woolworths was in Pasadena, California. (I think there were two, the other older and downtown.). None of the original business in that shopping center still operate; they have either been bought up or are out of business, the most obvious was the large stand alone former Sears & Robucks. The fun thing about that shopping center as a kid was it’s built as a split level on a slope, complete with an outdoor escalator. Many a neighborhood kid spent hours running up the downhill escalator, much to the disgust of the business owners and always subject to getting yelled at by our parental unit upon emerging from a boring store. Does it really take that long to grocery shop? I’d already free read the latest Mad Magazine, Road & Track, and Car & Driver and in need of amusement.
Our Woolworth in Toledo had a photo booth and tiny turtles. In regards to aging I quote my sister, Nancy. " We are not as young as we use to be but we are not as old as we are going to get."
Good quote! And Jennifer and I are in Arizona where you can really witness the age of the earth. A neighbor has a petrified log in her front yard. Now that’s old!
I too grew up in Southeastern Mass and remember the Five and Ten. I also remember the department stores like Wing's and Star Store — alas victims of the mall that was built in Dartmouth Mass. And now malls are being misplaced by online shopping. So it goes.
I remember replying to your comment days ago but the comment is not here. Huh. I had asked if the Star Store you mention is the New Bedford building being used by UMass Dartmouth for their art department. I am from Taunton but I have been to the Star Store, which they are currently trying to save (not sure if they are trying to save the building or just the university's art center)
I didn't see the comment. But, yes, that's the building. Downtown New Bedford really suffered with the creation of the mall. I am familiar with Taunton, having visited as a child various relatives who were patients of the hospital there.
Yes, New Bedford has suffered, as has Taunton. I tutored at a downtown charter school in NB about ten years ago and became fascinated with the town's history, especially the whaling, anti-slavery, and literary history. I live on Cape now.
I grew up across the Acushnet River in Fairhaven. Certainly the area has a lot of interesting history including my hometown. My grandparents emigrated from Madeira and the Azores.
I was just reading the about page on your Substack. I like that you write about New England. I feel a very deep connection to New England. I will subscribe shortly. Right now my wife and I are in Arizona for two weeks
I remember Woolworths. I guess that makes me old too! Our grandmother always took us to Kress and Co. to buy presents. Does anyone remember that store?
Hey Don--I hardly ever went to Woolworths growing up in the 60s. But NOW!
Living on the NC Coast as well as the on the coast of Kenya and the capital of Nairobi it seems Woolworths is quite prevalent nowadays.
Visited the Woolworths in Greensboro not so long ago and it’s a powerful experience. They’ve done an exceptional job with the museum. But here in Nairobi we’ve been doing quite a lot of Christmas shopping at Woolworths at the Yaya Center Mall. This Woolworths is a pretty upscale department store. I’ve been wondering about it--is it the same Woolworths? Did they just start using the name here in Kenya, and there is no issue because it’s Kenya and the name is no longer used elsewhere. Your post made me wonder!
That’s a good question. Woolworths had a huge presence in England but not sure elsewhere. I honestly didn’t do a ton of research for this essay, which is really just meant to be nostalgia/memoir, but I hope I didn’t do Woolworths a disservice by implying that it’s original stores are all kaput. How ethnocentric of me! I have a feeling your store is under the footlocker corporate umbrella.
We had Woolworth's, Newberry's and all kinds of shopping downtown until the late 70's or 80's! I remember my young son and I walked about 6 or 7 blocks to downtown for shopping and grabbing lunch at Woolworth's or Newberry's! I loved shopping in those two stores! But one by one the stores closed! And now you have to shop outside our city! Malls and shopping centers started to open. We had a nearby K-Mart but that closed! We had a Family Dollar Store, right down the street from where we lived but that closed! Walgreens took over that space, after the Family Dollar and other businesses were razed but Walgreens has since closed and now Dollar Tree took over the empty space! I worked at Family Dollar for awhile but had to quit right after my mom passed away in the late eighties because I had no one to watch my young son! Now, we have more pizza shops, restaurants and small convenience stores than grocery stores! You have to travel outside our city for groceries! Times have surely changed! Please, take me back to a time and a place I once knew and loved!
I remember sitting at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s for a lunch during afternoon shopping excursions with my aunt. Hamburger, coke and apple pie. I always felt so grown up.
Great memory. Thanks for reading and commenting, Janine! 🙂
Wow, this writing brought back memories. Being from Utica, I can remember going to Woolworth’s, the green army men in plastic bags, the 45’s & lp’s in the record dept. , being able to buy small turtles and plastic homes for them that had an island in the middle with a palm tree on it. It’s interesting how the mention of a place can bring back also a memory of a smell or a sound. Whenever I hear or think of Woolworth’s it’s the sound of those heavy plates & coffee cups being put into the bins to be washed from the lunch counter. Don, thanks for triggering a memory of the past!
That's really cool, Lance! You triggered a memory for me; we had one of those plastic turtle sets with a little turtle. And it was at my grandmother's so we probably did get it at the five and dime!
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Every now and then I have a moment with nothing obvious to fill it with (or nothing I actively *want* to do) and I think to myself, "I should go and read an older essay from Don, from before he and I were friends!" Today was one of those days.
Thanks for this piece of your history! I too have only a very vague notion of what Woolworth's was, and probably would have said the same thing as the coffee shop owner you were speaking with.
Foot Locker, eh? I could have sworn that name was around in the 90s...who knows (I'm feeling too lazy to look it up myself).
Favorite part?
"I quit eight months later when Mr. B went on vacation and Winnie became mean in both public and private."
Thanks, Mike. I love it when you find a line you like! I think of you sometimes when I'm editing a sentence. In fact, today I changed a word phrase in a sentence and thought, "Ooh, Mike's gonna like that!" (The essay I'm releasing tomorrow)
Oh man, I'm smiling hugely right now. I love that. Thank you!
‘My’ woolworths was on main street in Brockton. I didn’t work there, but it was a regular stop when we would take the bus downtown, hang around in the music shops until they kicked us out, maybe caught a kids matinee at the colonial. Completely carefree and safe.
Oh you grew up in Brockton! I grew up in Taunton. I just saw an old Woolworths in Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border. They were everywhere!
Actually West Bridgewater, but nobody but another south shore kid knows where that is :-). Are there any woolworths still in business? I’ll guess not: gone the way of Howard Johnsons and penny candy.
Woolworths, now Foot Locker, completely divested of its original stores. There are Woolworth's in Mexico and in the UK and South Africa and a few other places but they are no longer (and in some cases never were) connected to the original.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellisicky/2020/10/24/23-years-after-its-last-us-store-closed-woolworth-remains-open-and-competitive-in-mexico/amp/
We had a Woolworth's in our little NH mill town of a few thousand people. Even as I kid I thought of it as an old store, probably harkening back to the heyday of our town when it was an important stop for the milling of cloth along the Salmon Falls river. Some of the general stores one sees on Cape Cod and throughout New England remind me of mini-versions of Woolworth's. Tight aisles packed with all kinds of stuff, some practical, some whimsical. And the old, worn wooden floors.
Thanks for this trip back in time, Don!
I feel lucky to have experienced the lunch counter, though I wish I could go back and sit down for a cheeseburger and frappe one more time, and this time really take it in, lock it into my memory, knowing the experience would soon be unrepeatable (I know there are lunch counters out there somewhere. In fact, I know there is a small one at a pharmacy in Shelburne Falls.)
Hi Don, I found your Substack today by way of a comment you made to one of Diane K24’s notes.
I remember our local Woolworth store growing up as a kid in the 60’s and early 70’s. It had all the regular departments and typical layout, but was unique from the older Main Street stores in that it was located in what they use to call a “shopping center” back in the pre-mall days of Southern California.
Last spring my wife and I found ourselves driving through the town I grew up in and needing to stop for a pit stop and lunch break, exited the freeway in search of a nearby city park I remembered from my youth. Lo and behold, the shopping center was still they, albeit with a modernized look and the ubiquitous drive through Starbucks in the parking lot. And there, in the space and building shell of the old Woolworth store, in what must be the opposite of the old five-and-dime, was a Whole Paycheck. For fun and needing to pick up a few edibles for our road trip, we entered Whole Foods. As I walked the aisles, I could still visualize the store layout of the old Woolworth. I doubt a single employee in that store was born the last time I was in that building, when it was a Woolworth in 1975.
Michael, thank you for commenting and subscribing, and thanks for telling me how you found my blog. That’s always helpful to know!
That’s a good story about finding your old Woolworths, now Whole Foods! My downtown, Taunton Massachusetts, is a remnant of its former self, not for lack of trying. The Woolworth building is still there but not looking good. Lost all its architectural details. I think it’s a veteran’s center now.
My Woolworths was in Pasadena, California. (I think there were two, the other older and downtown.). None of the original business in that shopping center still operate; they have either been bought up or are out of business, the most obvious was the large stand alone former Sears & Robucks. The fun thing about that shopping center as a kid was it’s built as a split level on a slope, complete with an outdoor escalator. Many a neighborhood kid spent hours running up the downhill escalator, much to the disgust of the business owners and always subject to getting yelled at by our parental unit upon emerging from a boring store. Does it really take that long to grocery shop? I’d already free read the latest Mad Magazine, Road & Track, and Car & Driver and in need of amusement.
They still yell at kids for playing on the escalators at my local Barnes & Noble, so nothing has changed!
Our Woolworth in Toledo had a photo booth and tiny turtles. In regards to aging I quote my sister, Nancy. " We are not as young as we use to be but we are not as old as we are going to get."
Good quote! And Jennifer and I are in Arizona where you can really witness the age of the earth. A neighbor has a petrified log in her front yard. Now that’s old!
I too grew up in Southeastern Mass and remember the Five and Ten. I also remember the department stores like Wing's and Star Store — alas victims of the mall that was built in Dartmouth Mass. And now malls are being misplaced by online shopping. So it goes.
I remember replying to your comment days ago but the comment is not here. Huh. I had asked if the Star Store you mention is the New Bedford building being used by UMass Dartmouth for their art department. I am from Taunton but I have been to the Star Store, which they are currently trying to save (not sure if they are trying to save the building or just the university's art center)
I didn't see the comment. But, yes, that's the building. Downtown New Bedford really suffered with the creation of the mall. I am familiar with Taunton, having visited as a child various relatives who were patients of the hospital there.
Yes, New Bedford has suffered, as has Taunton. I tutored at a downtown charter school in NB about ten years ago and became fascinated with the town's history, especially the whaling, anti-slavery, and literary history. I live on Cape now.
I grew up across the Acushnet River in Fairhaven. Certainly the area has a lot of interesting history including my hometown. My grandparents emigrated from Madeira and the Azores.
I was just reading the about page on your Substack. I like that you write about New England. I feel a very deep connection to New England. I will subscribe shortly. Right now my wife and I are in Arizona for two weeks
Thank you for subscribing. Lucky you being in the warm, dry SW although it is rather mild here today.
I remember Woolworths. I guess that makes me old too! Our grandmother always took us to Kress and Co. to buy presents. Does anyone remember that store?
Interesting since Kenya was a colony of England until 1962-63. So could be a remnant of the old Woolworths...
Hey Don--I hardly ever went to Woolworths growing up in the 60s. But NOW!
Living on the NC Coast as well as the on the coast of Kenya and the capital of Nairobi it seems Woolworths is quite prevalent nowadays.
Visited the Woolworths in Greensboro not so long ago and it’s a powerful experience. They’ve done an exceptional job with the museum. But here in Nairobi we’ve been doing quite a lot of Christmas shopping at Woolworths at the Yaya Center Mall. This Woolworths is a pretty upscale department store. I’ve been wondering about it--is it the same Woolworths? Did they just start using the name here in Kenya, and there is no issue because it’s Kenya and the name is no longer used elsewhere. Your post made me wonder!
Next time I’m there I’ll plan to take a photo.
Cheers,
~Sky
That’s a good question. Woolworths had a huge presence in England but not sure elsewhere. I honestly didn’t do a ton of research for this essay, which is really just meant to be nostalgia/memoir, but I hope I didn’t do Woolworths a disservice by implying that it’s original stores are all kaput. How ethnocentric of me! I have a feeling your store is under the footlocker corporate umbrella.
We had Woolworth's, Newberry's and all kinds of shopping downtown until the late 70's or 80's! I remember my young son and I walked about 6 or 7 blocks to downtown for shopping and grabbing lunch at Woolworth's or Newberry's! I loved shopping in those two stores! But one by one the stores closed! And now you have to shop outside our city! Malls and shopping centers started to open. We had a nearby K-Mart but that closed! We had a Family Dollar Store, right down the street from where we lived but that closed! Walgreens took over that space, after the Family Dollar and other businesses were razed but Walgreens has since closed and now Dollar Tree took over the empty space! I worked at Family Dollar for awhile but had to quit right after my mom passed away in the late eighties because I had no one to watch my young son! Now, we have more pizza shops, restaurants and small convenience stores than grocery stores! You have to travel outside our city for groceries! Times have surely changed! Please, take me back to a time and a place I once knew and loved!
Change is the one thing you can rely on...
Thanks for reading and commenting, Connie! 🙏💚