You know what, I’m soon to be 85 years old. When i was a young kid there weren’t any shopping centers with large chain type food markets.
And i lived within spitting distance of one of the largest cities in the country, that being Philadelphia.
Center city Philly was full of large department stores with names like John Wanamaker, Lit Brothers, Gimbles, Snellenburgs, etc.
Today they are all gone.
Most shopping was done in local mom/pop type grocery stores. Fact is my late wife’s parents had one of those stores.
Gradually, large chain store operations started opening up in communities with large parking lots which most small stores didnt have.
Over time, they drove the mom/pop stores out of business. Today, many of those large chain stores are also out of business due to even larger stores like WalMart. At one time many small towns had new car dealer locations, such as Chevy and Ford. My brother in law inherited a Chevy dealer ship from his father that had been in business for many years. They also owned the Chrysler agency in the same town. Between the two, they employed about 150 people. There were 12 Chevy dealers in that county (Bucks) 10 years ago. Today there are just 3 and my brother in laws isn’t one of them. They are all mega dealers, with some having numerous other locations.
Does anybody remember the name F W WOOLWORTH? How about W T GRANT? And it wont be long till we can add SEARS ROEBUCK To the list.
And may i dare say even WallMart at some future point.
The world we live in is constantly changing, and always has been.
But it wouldn’t so much at least here if we all drove Fords and Chevys instead of Toyotas and Hondas to name but a few.
But then at one point some made a living building buggy’s for horses.
And one of my fathers uncles made his living cleaning up the horse manure in Philly, until horseless buggys put him out of work.
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