I remember it being a big event when the Kresge's store in our little downtown moved out to Rt 10 and became a K-Mart. I'm pretty sure that we went to the grand opening, I was only about six so memory is hazy.

For a long time the only shopping in my hometown was downtown. Shopping was a one day a week day-long event. Mom wore a hat and gloves, even in the summer.

The gloves were taken off after entering a store. Some purses even had a little clip that was used to attach gloves. Gloves went back on before leaving that store and then back off upon entering the next store. Being a kid, I didn't have to deal with that.

Morning shopping was for household dry goods and items such as fabric. (Mom made all of our clothes and only very occasionally purchased clothing for herself or Dad.)

Afternoons started with a trip to the drug store soda fountain where we had lunch. I don't think Mom ate but I'd always have a grilled cheese sandwich and complained that the mayo wasn't the same one we used at home.

My brother and I would browse the comic books while Mom did some shopping. Then we went to the grocery.

Sometime in the 70's Sears moved out of downtown; coinciding with the demise of those hat n' glove shopping rituals that I remember fondly. Course, those were the days when all I had to worry about was nothing.

Love this.

Great photos and the articles have good info. But the blue links have to go - my eyes are killing me.

I had really good downtown shopping experiences too, though not in hat-and-glove days. Still, we went downtown to Woolworth's each year - we walked down - for school supplies and for our meagre little Christmas shopping, and to eat at the lunch counter with grandma or mom. We got cinnamon rolls and crumb buns at the bakery, Catholic stuff at the Catholic juju store, shoes at the shoe store, the required protractor and typewriter ribbons at the stationery store, clarinet reeds at the music store.

But when the first 'big boxes' opened we went to those too. I wore a few blue-light specials in my time, and in those days K-Mart had an in-store cafeteria too. They had Coke slushies, a big treat. When the malls were new we used to go to them with a ridiculous frequency. We'd just walk around and maybe buy a magazine at B. Dalton or some house decor stuff at Kresge's or McCrory's. Teenagers would be smoking and making out, families would be ranging all over.

Then there's this: riding your bike through an abandoned mall.

Is it weird that I feel sorry for the abandoned plants? Probably.