retail reliquary

The tag above I found on an unopened pack of flowery Fieldcrest percale sheets.

Once upon a time back in the 1960s or 70s, there was a store on the corner of Main & N. Church in Smithfield VA. It was Southern Department Store (evidently a chain). My mom shopped there and even worked there one busy Christmas season. Later on the Southern became a Peebles (as it did in Williamsburg) which then moved off Main to a new shopping center on the Rt. 10 Bypass.




Also on Main is a Ben Franklin. It's still there last I passed through, but I haven't been inside it for years. The tag is from a pad of drawing paper my mom got for an art class back in the late 70s, early 80s.




Wornom's I seem to recall being somewhere in Hampton or Newport News. Indeed, if you see the Sickmalls posting of the Coliseum Mall store listing for 1988, you'll see "Wornom's Crafts". If I think real hard (or just look at a diagram of the mall), I may even place the store's location there. This tag again is from a pad of drawing paper.




There were once as many Leggett Department Stores in the Hampton Roads Area as there were buffalo in the Great Plains. Or thereabouts . . . The above hastily photographed bag is one artifact of those bygone stores.


Guess I don't have to introduce Woolworth . . .


Or Woolco . . .





The K & K tag was off of some model train widget from my youth. Likely from the K & K Toys in Coliseum Mall (again with the store listing).