Who remembers…
I can remember this as a little kid in the mid 50s, going to Woolworth’s was a once every couple of months thing. I was allowed to get either a grilled cheese sandwich or meatloaf and cornbread sticks.
Research the old fashioned way…
And then I got older… And liked rocking and rolling…
Got this from an old shipmate, not our crew, but a LOT of time at 200′, routinely doing 45 degree or more banks to get back around on ‘things’… 🙂
Woolworths Downtown Detroit, having ridden there on a bus from a suburb with my older sister.
Inconceivable!
Wow… I’m trying to picture that. We’ve really devolved, eh?
Woolworths or Kresge, yeah that was a special treat being out. If we were really good, you might get some of mom’s milkshake. That was HER treat, and carefully guarded.
cornbread sticks and meatloaf – one of my faves… but not as good as Mom’s meatloaf.
There was a pharmacy just down the street from my first real job (after newspaper delivery) at a gas station. They had a lunch counter and their sausage patty and egg sandwich was breakfast on many occasions.
There is still a pharmacy in Raleigh with a lunch counter – great food, wonderful deserts.
I was on USS Dolphin AGSS555 off San Diego on midwatch on the bridge as look out. The OD was looking aft for some reason, I looking fwd when suddenly we were lit up by an S3 Viking. It ran down our wake and turned and then came back up our track, lit us up again. I was night blind for about 20 minutes. Didn’t hear it it till it was right over us. Sneaky bastards……
I don’t remember Woolworth’s – but I do remember Kmart’s lunch counter, which I’ve heard was a poor imitation.
I remember the card catalog. I wonder what’s happened to all those cabinets.
A buddy and his brother got a bunch of card catalog cabinets from several library systems in West-by-God Virginia. They turned them into TV and stereo cabinets, wine racks, and a bunch of other cool things. And the libraries PAID them to haul the things away.
That’s awesome. I’m glad some are being reused.
Ed/PK- Oh yeah…But it was still a treat!
Tom- That’s amazing that one still exists!!!
Glenn- Snerk… Sneaky? Us??? 😉
Jon- Ummm… no… just no!
JMI- Good question, they were HEAVY when empty! Real wood and all that…
Never was in a Woolworth’s. My aunt did work for a time at the counter at a Rexall. (“Good Health to all, from Rexall!”)
There is a pharmacy in Hillsboro, OR that still has its soda fountain. Enjoy these pics:
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/oregon/kenny-and-zukes-deli-or/
Our neighbor was the local Woolworth’s manager, his wife supervised the lunch counter. during non-school days, when palling around with their kids, lunch often meant a trip downtown to the lunch counter.
Cherry coke and grilled cheese sandwich at the counter. At the drug store behind the Esso station where I pumped gas, checked the oil, and cleaned windows after school. Memories…
I spent a lot of time on the other side of the cockpit, perched on the APS-80 cabinet.
Hamburger with butter-toasted bun and a coke. Best burger ever.
Lunch counters and real soda counters. I’ve been to a few. The last one in my town hung on for the longest time, until the whole building got renovated for offices and a rooftop night-club.
Sad watching downtown get slowly crushed by regulations, poor traffic planning, the Mall (which is now dead or dying.) And a cheap, good lunch counter gets replaced by an expensive but not good ‘suits sit down’ restaurant. Bastiges.
The card catalog, the Periodicals that listed all the magazines and their articles, and librarians that used to support free speech and wanted controversial books like “Huck Finn” and such in their buildings. Why, I remember the librarians fighting to keep the borrowed book lists hidden from the governments.
Lost times, fallen times.
There is a pharmacy with a soda fountain in my town. Took the kids there at every opportunity. The pharmacy part recently closed but the fountain is still going strong. Consider what that means considering the profitability of selling drugs!
Oh yeah, the five and dime.
The aircraft shot; ‘Reminds me of my time in the Coast Guard, returning from LORSTA Attu, Dutch Harbor, or the like, on a C-130, affectionately known as “Redtail Airlines.” The trip always involved divebombing foreign fishing boats “to get their hull numbers.” We dove in low enough to be able to see the expressions on the boat crews’ faces! HA-HA! WHAT A HOOT! CG pilots are flat-out CRAZY! ‘Loved every minute of it!!!
Lived in towns too small for lunch counters.
And I remember eating at a lunch counter and being flanked by two smokers.
Not a good experience and some of the good old days weren’t so good.
All- Thanks for the comments! And yes, there was always good AND bad back in the day.
Posted from my iPhone.
We lived in the Detroit ‘burbs where there was an amusement park at the beach, across the street from the 25 cent theater; my brothers and I could really rock the Tilt-a-Whirl, and black-n-white monster movies were a favorite.
For a few years in the ’70s, I lived on the flight path near Moffett NAS. Shift change for the Orions was an interesting experience. (Pain in the arse in the ’90s when Slick Willy Clinton landed there to hit the Silicon Valley ATM.) Now, we’re near the area where F15Cs get to play. Not quite the same, but fun to watch them do final approaches when I’m in town.
Woolworths, downtown Kansas City, in the ’70s… The thing I remember most: chocolate Coke! Why, with all the flavors available now, that’s not a thing, I’ll never know. Delicious.
Not sure about being in a Woolworth’s, but most of the “department stores” my Mom would shop at had lunch counters, and we’d always stop for a snack. That’s where I had my first Cherry Phosphate, and found out how good they were.
Is that cockpit shot taken from an Orion?
RCPete- I should have waved when we went over…LOL
Joe- That’s one I’ve never heard of!
drjim- Interesting, and yes, cockpit view out of a P-3 at 200 feet.
Per reply to Ed — we’ve devolved at a shocking rate over a pretty short period of time. Let’s hope the decline doesn’t accelerate. Not hopeful…
Great rock ‘n roll pic!
Remember going to Woolworth’s counter and getting a malted milkshake. Don’t remember ever eating there.
Flying circles in the sky, the new pilots always thought they could do flat turns so we wouldn’t lose the DF line of bearing, and the older pilot always laughed and said “Sure, go ahead, remember, you have to do it every turn for the mission…”
We allegedly had the ability to be part of the net with the ground based systems, but they were about 3 generations of technology ahead of us, and their data link ran MUCH faster, so whenever we managed to link in they claimed it was because they had the Chaplain on site…
..and we’d lose the lock as soon as the end of the race track came up and we had to turn again…
We never lived anywhere that had a Woolworth’s, though I remember K-Mart having a diner. Most Wal-Marts in my area have a McDonalds inside.
I can remember my grandmother taking us to a Woolworth’s in the city and having us sit at the lunch counter. I also remember the pharmacy in our small town still had its soda fountain until we moved in the late ’70s, right next to the honest-to-God grocery store (NOT supermarket, thank you) with an actual butcher behind the meat counter.Sad to say, they were erased by rhe town being “discovered” by the yuppies by the early ’90s.[sigh]
I was with 2nd MAW, so the only time I saw a P-3 was when I was on a minidet when one was parked on the VAL line at JAX, but, as a civilian, I met a sonar operator with some interesting sea stories…
Mike,
My granddad was an honest-to-God meat cutter (do NOT call him a butcher). He hated the rise of self-service meat counters, not because of reduced employment opportunities, but because of the lack of selection, inability to have custom cuts and the deceptive practices some “butchers” are able to get away with. Truly a bygone era.
All- Appreciate the comments! NRW- We have a ‘real’ butcher shop in town with a real meat cutter working there. He is happy to do special cuts if requested(and laughs at the whole Tomahawk Chops- Stupid expensive, but he’ll cut them in a heartbeat)…