Do you remember? The 5 and 10 cent store!

Dear Diary,

My weekly visits to Dotty, my 94 year old friend, are most often a trip down memory lane.  Her recollections of current events are sketchy but she has a vivid recall of the past and I am happy to indulge her.  Yesterday we were chatting about Christmas shopping in our youth.  She and her family had to drive to Portland to visit the "Five and Dime".  We had one in town when I was growing up.  This one is in North Conway New Hampshire and it always makes me smile when I drive past.

I remember quite clearly going to "Woolworth's" to do my Christmas shopping back in the 1950's.  It was a wonderful place.  There were handkerchiefs for my Dad (usually three to a package, no monogram please he preferred the plain ones) and perhaps a small gift set of "Evening in Paris" for my mother (what in the world did she do with all that awful stuff?), my brother might get a model airplane to construct and my grandmother often got some dusting powder with a fluffy pink puff (she probably had a truck load of the stuff already!).

When I first moved to Maine there was a similar kind of store in town, Welch's.  You could buy anything from a mattress to a package of sewing needles in the tiny store.  It closed several years ago when the man who ran it for over 50 years finally decided to retire.  I miss that store. 

Here is a tune from the "vaults",  I found a million dollar baby (in a 5 & 10 cent store)