Elma Seward, 1921-2010

From EJSeward

Early and often, things posted here were from a trip taken with my mom. Or things she had kept.

This Wednesday the 20th, she passed away.

Much as it's been for my brother who died February last year, this blog is an extended remembrance of the world in which she lived.

From EJSeward

a VDOT view of the snow

Photos posted on Flickr by the Virginia Department of Transportation of the recent snow storm.

Long Gone Away

This homebrew music video uses some stills from the Night Wanderer post and one of the razed Walnut Mall lot. And an unblogged photo of the Coliseum Mall demolition.

Plus Super-8 footage circa 1998 of the so-called ghost house in my old neck of the woods and other area bits & pieces.

Like Pons Store or the James River seen from Hog Island.

wayback with Stuckey's

To file under Stuckey's . . .

As things online have a pretty fast turnover, it's thanks to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine that old websites can still be visited.

The Stuck On Stuckey's site being a case in point . . .

There's a whole list of links to different editions, but this one will get you there.

As Petersburg gets mentioned here now and again, here's a postcard image of an old Stuckey's on US 301. From this list of Stuckey's images.

persistence of vision: Walnut Mall, Petersburg VA

As posted back in the fall of '06, I tried taking my mom by the Walnut Mall where she used to go way back when. It was by then a red clay lot awaiting a new Food Lion to be born. The adjacent Crater Cinema building was still there (repurposed as a church), but the mall was gone.

Thanks to the online sleuthing of That Mall's Sick And That Store's Dead! (aka Sickmalls) one could check the Virginia Film Office location site & find interior & exterior shots of the vanished mall.

Unfortunately, though the location page still exists for Walnut Mall, the pictures are gone. Perhaps deleted--I can't say for sure.

UPDATE 29 Sept 2008--Forget what I wrote above and try this link for the VA Film Office pics of Walnut Mall:
http://va.reel-scout.com/loc_detail.aspx?id=2657&g=

(Thinking out loud: If these images have been ever are deleted, I hope the Virginia Film Office will pass along copies/hard originals to the Library of Virginia or some appropriate historical group or archive. Perhaps make them available online again as images of Virginia's recent past.)

Thankfully, an informative Labelscar post about Walnut Mall still has two cool pics from 1991. While some things had likely changed, I know these pictures revive my own faded memories of the mall (of Thalheimer's and Peoples Drug, in particular) as it was in the early 1970s.

Also the Labelscar post links to aerial images of the area that still (so far) show the old Walnut Mall.

Sometimes it's good when things lag a bit and information is not so up to date.

hangers and bags

More hasty photos, this time of coat hangers and suit bags.


Click the photo below for a closer look at a hanger from The Hub ("Tidewater's Most Popular Stores").

in Petersburg it's Rucker Rosenstock

What I know or recall of Rucker Rosenstock would find spacious accommodation on the point of a needle. But the store is mentioned in a DeadMalls entry on the long gone Walnut Mall. And in this Labelscar entry.

sick in a good way . . .

[reposted from unterkayness, epic backstory to be found there]

On her way to work, school and Lane Bryant, Anita Rose has been keeping tabs on dead & dying retail in the Hampton Roads area and thereabouts. The now long gone Coliseum Mall and Mercury Plaza. The pretty much totally repurposed Newmarket North/Newmarket Fair mall. The extant time machine to '89 that is Southpark Mall.

Beyond southeastern Virginia, the Sickmalls blog has links to other retail blogs and sites dedicated to once ubiquitous chains like Caldor and Ames. And Anita also has a hand in Deadmalls.com.

But shunting over to the big grid experience, you'll miss some cool details and such.

So go see for yourself why That Mall's Sick And That Store's Dead! wins with special recommendation the E for Excellent blog award.

cinema arcana

The good thing about being older and hardly throwing anything away is finding crazy bits of who knows what. Like a ticket stub from the Newmarket Mall Four cinema in Hampton.

Or yet another ticket stub from the same movie theatre. Note the buck increase in admission.

Below is a stub from the Crater movie theatre that used to be near Walnut Mall in Petersburg.


None of this could be anymore recent than the early 1980s. The buck seventy five Newmarket ticket may be from the 70s.

Wish I could say for sure what movies were seen on those tickets. The Crater I'd be guessing from the admission price etc. would be a midnight showing of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.

Somewhere I have stubs from the NARO and Vinegar Hill and more far flung art houses. Later maybe.

in search of Walnut Mall, Petersburg VA

As you can see above, I arrived a little late.

What was Walnut Mall is a future home of Food Lion and, for the time being, a red clay lot.

And since there's already a Food Lion not too south on Rt. 301, I guess that location may soon take a step down in the commercial real estate food chain.

In the meantime, you can currently still find an aerial image of Walnut Mall at Mapquest if you search for a map of Walnut Blvd. Petersburg VA and select the aerial image feature. (UPDATE: thanks to Sickmalls, these exterior & interior shots of the mall from the Virginia Film Office. And at now at Labelscar, mall info plus recently posted 1991 pics of the Thalheimer's there.)

Thankfully, the old movie theatre across the Blvd. from the ex-mall is still standing.


But now it's a church.


Though it may not be the same place where I saw The Goodbye Girl and (some years later) a midnight showing of Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris, the building doesn't look all that different than it did 25-30 years ago. (UPDATE: An old ticket stub and more besides.)

Here are some other pics of the area, like the nearby Walnut Hill Plaza sign:



I'd never noticed those walnuts before . . .

To make it up to my agéd mom for having driven her way up to some non-existent mall, we went to King's BBQ No. 2.