Know how to make a six year-old kid light up in 1966? Ask him if he would like to go to the Dime Store!
Dime Stores sprang up across the country in the early twentieth century. By Baby Boomer time, every town with at least a thousand inhabitants had at least one. We had a Woolworth's in my home town. Other brands included Kress, Ben Franklin, and TG&Y.
They frequently featured lunch counters. Our store in Miami, Oklahoma did. In fact, a major kickoff of the Civil Rights movement took place at a Woolworth's lunch counter in 1960 at Greensboro, North Carolina. A piece of that counter is in the Smithsonian.
I have fond memories of cherry shakes at that store I grew up with. But the best part was the TOYS!
There were long divided compartments filled with plastic Japanese-made delights that would make a kid's head spin. Toy soldiers, miniature cars, play guns, balls, tops, whistles, airplanes, boats, and more were stocked in those magical shelves. They were just the right height for a kid to browse through them too.
Mom would often let me pick one out. It usually cost a dime. My collection of plastic treasures would thus grow incrementally. And being plastic, they are probably still in pristine condition buried in various landfills, awaiting future archaeologists to discover and speculate over.
The store even had a unique aroma, a mixture of cooking food, mothballs, old wood (it was in an ancient downtown building), and tennis shoe soles. I remember getting my first genuine pair of P.F. Flyers at that store.
Around 1951, a man opened a Ben Franklin up in Bentonville, Arkansas. His name was Sam Walton.
He went on to bigger things, and took most of the Dime Store chains with him.
Comments (7)
I grew up in a small town in New Jersey and we had a Ben Franklin's. I am 48 and I recently revisited my hometown. The Ben Franklin's JUST closed! So it had been there many, many years. I loved the little toys they sold!
Posted by Rhea | December 3, 2006 12:37 PM
Posted on December 3, 2006 12:37
I remember going to Kresge's alot. It was always full to the brim with so much stuff you could barely sift through everything. They had a little lunch counter where you could get food or ice cream. You could pop a balloon with a piece of paper in it that would let you get a small discount or even better...a free ice cream sundae!
Posted by Rhonda | April 12, 2007 7:42 PM
Posted on April 12, 2007 19:42
The Woolworth's in my town, or 5&10 as it was called, closed before I was born. I'm 56.
I did go into many a dime store anyway. The lunch counters are something kids today missed out on. So much better than the fast food chains.
I think the last time I enjoyed a cheeseburger, from a handmade patty, was at J.J. Newbury's in Portsmouth NH.
Posted by Harry A Steere | August 21, 2008 2:45 PM
Posted on August 21, 2008 14:45
My hometown we had a Kressgees five and dime store. I do remember Ben Franklin stores and I believe there are still a few around. Woolworths and Woolco. In New Carrollton it was the Zayres store. Dime stores were fun especially in the toy section. I guess todays dime stores are the dollar stores that are all over? I sort of remember these stores as being kind of messy?
Posted by Rivers End | April 26, 2009 11:12 AM
Posted on April 26, 2009 11:12
My hometown: Goshen, Indiana had a G.G. Murphy and a J.J. Newberry side by side and a local version called Maleys down the street. I went from buying toys to record albums. Once I got caught shoplifting a mini Superball, the manager scared me straight and I never stole again. Wish I could thank him. After I came back from the service for a visit, they were all gone. My favorite memories were the old wooden floors and the bulk candy cases near the front with the fresh roasted nuts. I can still smell the combinations of all those smells mixing together.
Posted by Ricky Berkey | June 19, 2009 10:45 PM
Posted on June 19, 2009 22:45
For me, the dime store was synonymous with Halloween . . . all those great costumes, candies and accessories!
It was also the place where I spent all my money (from collecting returnable soda bottles) on model kits and Mego superhero dolls.
Out town, Peoria IL, had several different chains: Fogler's, Hornsby's, Ben Franklin and Woolworth' to name a few.
Better days IMO.
Posted by Jeff Carlson | August 27, 2009 9:45 AM
Posted on August 27, 2009 09:45
In our downtown we had Woolworth, Kress, McClellan and W T Grant. In the post WWII neighborhoods east of downtown there was a second Woolworth in a neighborhood shopping center built in 1956. We lived a block away from that one. My elementary school was on the block between. Mom and I frequently walked there. All the dime stores had lunch counters back then. So did drugstores. Mom and I would have lunch or an ice cream treat at Woolworth's whenever she did any shopping at the shopping center. There were balloons you could pop and learn the price of your banana split. By the age of seven I was allowed to walk there myself. Things were safer back then. Great toy browsing at Woolworth's and Kerr Drugstore. The week Mom died in 1989, Woolworth closed. It was really sad to me to walk past that empty store and see the lunch counter where Mom and I had many pleasant outings. Happily, the following year, that storefront was divided. Two-thirds became a piano & music store. The remaining third contained the lunch counter and it became a locally owned breakfast & lunch diner. It remains open. I eventually taught in my former elementary school and still live in my childhood home. I often have lunch at that old counter of my childhood-- but there's no toy aisle to browse! You might say I'm one old Boomer who still lives in the shadow of his Boomer days.
Posted by NCeddie | May 3, 2010 7:04 PM
Posted on May 3, 2010 19:04