21st century dime store

Back in the late 50’s and early 60s, before I started my lawn mowing business, my brother and I were given a very modest allowance of 25 cents a week. Even adjusted for inflation it wasn’t much money then or now, but there was one place near and dear to my heart where I could stretch that quarter out purchasing little cool things that I remember to this day. The 5 and dime, 10 cent store or dime store— whatever you wanted to call it — was the most exciting and fun emporium a kid back in those days could ask for.

In my neighborhood, far from downtown New Orleans where the huge S.H. Kress and F.W. Woolworth stores resided with their long lunch counters and soda fountains and throngs of shoppers on bustling Canal Street, there was a small strip shopping center. It contained several businesses including a Winn-Dixie grocery store, a small bank branch, and a T.G.&Y. 5-10 & 25 cent store. This would have been during the years 1958-1960. It seemed like a huge place to a starry-eyed kid of 9 with a bit of an oversized imagination. Some of the things I remember buying were magnets, chunks of chocolate candy, pipe cleaners which you could tie together and make things, and Duncan yo-yo’s which I think cost around 25 cents, a whole week’s allowance. It didn’t matter because in 1959 when yo-yo’s were a huge fad, everyone had them. They were as popular or more so than marbles. I remember some kids could get a Duncan butterfly yo-yo and perform all kinds of maneuvers with it. Me — I was pretty inept at it. All I could do was fling the thing down toward the ground and send it flying back up with a flick of my wrist. Sometimes I got hit in the forehead. Other kids could have the yo-yo doing all kinds of tricks. It was very frustrating.

From those earliest T.G. & Y. shopping experiences, there was no turning back. Every small town we’d pass through on our vacation trips had a dime store, locally owned and locally named. In Sumter, SC where we went on vacations to see my relatives, there was a big Kress on Main Street as well as a McClellans. How I loved that store which I visited all during the sixties. It had wooden floors, always smelled like freshly popped movie-theater popcorn, and was absolutely filled with goods of every sort. It lasted until about 1980, I believe when all the bigger stores on Main Street began moving to the new mall on the outskirts of town and dime stores started disappearing.

In the 1960s we lived on the Westbank of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, and when we moved there in 1961 it didn’t take me long to discover the two dime stores along Gen. Meyer Avenue in small shopping centers. The one nearest to me had a Morgan & Lindsay as well as a grocery store and the barber shop I went to and which I’ve previously written about at OD. The other shopping center, about a mile away, had an A&P food store and a T.G.&Y. The Morgan & Lindsey was closer so I’d go there more often, usually riding my bike. I recall buying chunks of chocolate at the T.G. & Y. from a glass case and cheap, hardcover abridged versions of classic literature such as Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Also I bought my Hardy Boys mystery series there as as well as outdoor boys’ adventure novels such as “The Walton Boys in High Country.” Years who I went online and bought a copy for old time’s sake. That shopping center also had a Royal Castle Hamburger shop where you could get sizzling little hamburgers cooked with chopped onions and placed on a very soft bun with a pickle on top. No fancy jumbo hamburger today can compare to those mouth-watering treats that were only 15 cents apiece so you could eat several of them and get a frosted mug of root beer, too.

I digress, but it sure is fun to travel down Memory Lane.

The point of this whole piece is to tell you about my happy re-discovery about six months ago of Dollar Tree stores. Years ago I had gone to one in Sumter at the mall buying this and that, and enjoyed it okay, but it was crowded and rather junky. The Charleston Dollar Tree, located in a strip shopping center with other discount stores, was considerably larger, but it didn’t impress me too much either, particularly after I bought a small cleaning utensil that fell apart. I lost interest and didn’t go back to that store for another 15 years until last Fall. To my great surprise and delight I discovered a store full of useful items and everything in between, of surprisingly good quality. Everything was a dollar so when I made that first visit late last November, I bought some Autumn-themed paper plates and coffee mugs. I went back a week or so later and filled my basket with notepads, pens, six ounce Coca-Cola glasses, scouring pads, cookies, and, since Christmas was coming up, I bought some ornaments for our little tree and a small teddy bear with Christmas cap and elf outfit for Mom who loved it. Only a dollar! It was fun dropping these little knick-knacks and candy into my basket with abandon. You could end up at the check-out counter with 16 items and only pay $16 plus tax. On recent visits I’ve gotten nice little LED flashlights for a dollar and a pack of batteries for the same price. What a bargain! Also, of course, small bags of Easter chocolate eggs and a small stuffed bunny for Mom.

It dawned on me one day when I eagerly entered one of the two Dollar Trees I regularly go to that, yes, of course, this is exactly what a dime store in 2019 would and should look like. It’s updated a bit for our modern times but it’s still the 5-10-25 cent store I remember from my childhood and youth. In this crazy world of frantic technological change and online shopping, Woolworth and Kress live on, just with a different name.