Oh, K!

Before KMart, the same company ran S.S. Kresge stores all over America. Think of a mini-KMart, with a delicatessen and lunch counter/soda fountain, stationery, yard goods for those who made their own clothing and draperies. a smattering of tools and hardware, live goldfish, baby clothes, some books and magazines...you get the picture: a little of everything and not enough of anything. 

Starting in 1962, the company opened KMart stores, and for a while, they were big...bigger than WalMart and Target, two competitors who swallowed them whole over the years (not to mention Amazon, which is threatening to shutter just about everything but mortuaries and gas stations, and will probably figure out a way to deliver caskets and gasoline to Americans at home), leaving KMart in the sad state they currently occupy: just three stores left in the US. Once there were more than 2,000.  Now, there are three.

If you have the urge to hear "Attention KMart shoppers!" one last time, and sip a Slush Puppy while gnawing on salty popcorn, here are the final three: 

• Miami, Florida: 14091 SW 88th St.
• Westwood, New Jersey: 700 Broadway
• Bridgehampton, New York: 2044 Montauk Highway

Fortune magazine, the people who spend time sweeping up the figurative rubble left behind when formerly big businesses get tiny and then close up, say Big K "often focused on discounts, but failing to appeal to a specific demographic hurt the business. Kmart wanted to appeal to everyone, but instead it became bland and lacked an image.”

Having shopped at all these chains, I tell you, I can't really say there is a difference between the KMart crowd and the WalMartians. 

“Kmart was part of America,” said Michael Lisicky, a Baltimore-based author who has written several books on U.S. retail history. “Everybody went to Kmart, whether you liked it or not. They had everything. You had toys. You had sporting goods. You had candy. You had stationery. It was something for everybody. This was almost as much of a social visit as it was a shopping visit. You could spend hours here. And these just dotted the American landscape over the years.”

You could spend hours there, and I heard from lots of people who said they knew parents who dropped little Abercrombie and Ursula off at noon on a Saturday, did their errands, and returned about 4 to pick up the kids, all sticky from Cherry Guzzles and Sugar Daddy candies. 

It was in front of our KMart in the North Plaza Mall  which is no longer a mall that I first felt the creaking of old age, for it was there that I pulled up in front of the store to let Peggy run in and pick up one thing one day when I was maybe 30 and a county police officer drove up slowly and said, "Sir, you're going to have to move, please."

My father's words rang in my ears: "The first time a policeman calls you 'sir,' you're old."

PS - That store closed a couple of winters ago. They are turning it into a flooring and rug store, with no slush puppies.