I woke up from a dream a couple days ago and remembered very little of it. But in part of the dream I ended up in an old discount department store, Zayre, that was popular in my childhood. I haven’t thought of the store in many, many years so it’s strange it would appear in my dream. I’m not even sure that really was the store in my dream. But the sign on the store was like the old neon Zayre signs in the 60’s and 70’s. So maybe something about the sign on the store triggered my memory of the store’s existence. I couldn’t really remember when Zayre disappeared from the landscape of my life so I went searching online as one does. I found out all I wanted to know and more. (This is the first website I found. There are several photos of old Zayre stores in the middle of the page with signs as in my dream.)  I discovered heaps of websites dedicated to old chain stores, be they department stores or grocery stores. And on the blogrolls of some of the websites were links to other similarly nostalgic websites. I’ve found it quite fascinating taking this stroll into the past because I read about many other stores that I’d also just as easily forgotten.

For example, what I consdered  the local Target where I grew up actually started out as a Richway. And I knew it as Richway far more years than as a Target so it’s kind of interesting that I didn’t think about the fact it had been Richway most of my growing up years. I’d even forgotten that Richway was a discount offshoot of Rich’s department store in Atlanta. And apparently that store has now been taken over by Macy’s if I remember what I read correctly. Then there is the Treasure Island department/grocery hypermarket where my family shopped when we lived in Georgia. I think I only ever went to the one store but I have fond memories of ice cream treats from the front of that store. I was fairly certain it had closed down at some point but I also learned that the original Home Depots were housed in old Treasure Island stores not far from the one where we shopped. That’s where I learned that Eckerd drugs no longer exists because apparently Treasury drugs, which was part of the Treasure Island/Treasury chain, either bought it out or vice versa. And CVS  eventually bought out the entire conglomerate. This kind of clears up my curiosity that there only seemed to be two standalone drug store chains while I was in Texas. I have strong memories of the Eckerd’s chain through most of my life before moving to Australia. I still have a box of Christmas ornaments that my family bought there thirty-five years ago. It was a ncie set of ornaments although most have broken over the years.

There were many more tidbits of information I learned while trawling through various websites. I ran across one on dead malls which I had run across once before. On that previous  occasion I discovered that Carolina Circle Mall in Greensboro, NC had closed many years ago. It’s not so much I had any particular attachment to the mall but it was one of the shopping centers I used to visit during my college and early work years so it was truly weird to think it had gone. I eventually even found a link to a website dedicated to that old mall started by a teenager who is now probably about twenty years old.  I read about the old Eastland Mall in Charlotte, which was the local hangout during my teenage years. It closed just a few weeks ago after many years of decline. I must admit that left me feeling very sad since I spent a lot of time there during my teenage years. I was aware of the mall closing because of a fan page created for it on Facebook. Otherwise I might very well have learned of its demise from the dead malls website. And today I found a website dedicated to Charlotte (NC) eateries that are no longer around.  That made me sad, too, because I recognised many of them. And I’d even eaten at some of them.

It’s made me rather sad for the loss of such a diverse range of retail outlets as once existed. I know change is a fact of life. But it really seems as though the limit has nearly been reached for the smaller and/or weaker fish being swallowed up by the big fish so I wonder what happens next in the overall picture.