Does anybody remember which of the Fractured Fairy Tales featured the oft-repeated phrase “She’ll have a head like a casaba melon,” or something like that? It was my favorite but I can’t even remember what story it was. Man those were awesome:
I was thinking this morning about stores I grew up going to back in Ohio. There’s this Target around the corner from where I live now that’s kind of our go-to place for everything. They sell just about everything, including groceries; and there’s a snack bar and a Starbuck’s inside. But we also shop at Kohl’s, Harris Teeter, Wegman’s, CVS, Costco…
I grew up in the Cleveland suburbs in the 70s and 80s. In the 70s, especially, there were a lot of stores around that we just don’t have anymore. Uncle Bill’s? Gold Circle? These places are gone (as far as I know) now. Of course they opened a far-out drug/everything store called Marc’s, which turned into a chain and took off, but a lot of the other variety stores are kaput, or drastically changed. I remember going to KMart on Bagley Road all the time. We bought everything there. Clothes, household items, lawn chairs, cleaning products, stuff for the car, every kind of seasonal decorative item you can imagine - from Halloween costumes to Christmas ornaments to plastic eggs for Easter. I wore a lot of no-name brand jeans and sneakers from KMart. Did I beg my mom for Nikes? Sure I did, but man she was frugal, to put it mildly. So instead I had the KMart version (and a little teasing at school).
And the garden center! I remember going every spring to pick out the flowers and vegetables that my mom would transplant into our garden and hedges. We even bought lilies and other flowering plants there at Easter that she transplanted into the dirt next to the house. Impossibly, they took root and continued to bloom every year.
This particular KMart was just 100 kinds of awesome. There was a little cafeteria-style restaurant in the back, as well as a little snack bar up front! I loved to get Slurpees there - usually the Coke flavor. Back in the day, Slurpee only came in two flavors: Coke and Cherry. Cherry was too sweet and turned your mouth all red, so Coke it was.
I remember one time when I was in the first grade or so, for some reason I was at KMart with my mom, just the two of us. Not sure where my sister was at the time. I was walking around KMart by myself (back then parents let their 7-year-olds wander stores alone, I guess). I remember walking through the toy aisles and being particularly interested in some model kits they had for sale. They showed little scenarios like Dracula rising from his coffin or The Mummy opening his sarcophagus and leaving his tomb. Or, best of all, grave robbers stealing a body to make Frankenstein! I was standing there, staring at these things, completely horrified and fascinated and a little bit terrified — and I fainted. Just fell right over, unconscious. My mom found me, I don’t know how, and the next thing I remember, she had loaded me awkwardly into the cart and was pushing me towards the back of the store.
Now here’s the thing - not only did KMart have very nice restrooms back then, they had a ladies lounge. That’s right - a whole room where ladies could sit and smoke or fix their hair or, well, lounge, I guess. And that’s where my mom took me, and a helpful employee procured a glass of water for me. I remember several employees asking my mom what happened and her saying she didn’t know, I must be sick. I kept trying to tell her “I fainted because I was looking at the Frankenstein.” This made no sense to her AT ALL and probably contributed to the visit to my pediatrician which was inflicted on me that same afternoon. (I really hated my pediatrician - he had big, clammy hands and greasy hair and a very heavy Greek accent that I could never understand. My mom had to act as interpreter. I was forced to see this dude as my primary care provider until I graduated from high school and ran far, far away from Brookpark, Ohio!) I had a fever, just a little bug, and went home to eat chicken soup and take aspirin and watch the afternoon monster movie on TV (how appropriate).
KMart’s glory days are gone now, especially at that particular Bagley Road outpost. I’m not even sure that store is open anymore. Some time in the late 80s, Little Caesar’s took over the restaurant, and the snack bar at the front shut down. Of course there was some rebirth in the Martha Stewart era, but KMart these days is really a shadow of the Midwestern glory that I remember, and closed a lot of stores around here a few years back. Sure we have nice places to shop now, but somehow, Target’s just not the same.
