I am strangely moved & fascinated by businesses that no longer exist - specifically ones that were seemingly ubiquitous in my childhood. One of those was a small five-&-dime store called TG&Y. From the time I was about 9 till the time I was about 14, my family lived in an apartment complex right next to a shopping center called Ridgewood (you can see the current businesses that occupy the place here. To say that I was in a store or walking through the parking lot of the shopping center most days of that time would not be an exaggeration - a branch of the public library was there, as was a Minyard's supermarket, & a dollar movie theater. & one of the stores closest to us - & frankly, easiest to shoplift from - was the TG&Y.
I can almost walk through it in my mind. If I walked in today, I would know exactly where the toy section was. I bought - or my mother bought for me - many Star Wars figures & accessories there. & I stole a few more.
After we moved, I didn't find myself at that shopping center very often, & soon enough both the Minyard's & the TG&Y were gone. The Wikipedia has a handy list of "defunct retail companies of the United States, & the sad story of TG&Y's demise can be read at the link above. A surprise - Minyard's is not on there! Apparently there are 13 stores left in the Dallas area!
I guess nothing lasts forever. Even giant mainstays like K-Mart & Sears are disappearing, & luckily there are those chronicling their demise. I am not sad about a business dying - but it does affect me in a strange way, like I have recently watched an empty office building bulldozed in my neighborhood. There are a few photos of it somewhere on my Tumblr blog. I wish I could've gotten some of the photos on this website featuring "dead & dying K-Mart stores."
There's a K-Mart nearby - maybe I'll go have a look around. But I better hurry! It looks like they're going the way of the ol' TG&Y.
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