I Digress: Where Have All the Dime Stores Gone?
I’m making a small bridal quilt–a lap quilt or wall hanging, really. It’s for loved ones, and I’m giving it a lot of care and attention. The design is mostly cut from scrapps, appliqued to a white background, and the pattern is called the Whig Rose or Rose of Sharon.
Today is Friday, it’s a little after lunch, and I’ve suddenly discovered that I’m in serious need of a white chalk marking pencil. The times being what they are, this is a catastrophe of major dimensions. In days of yore, I could have walked up the hill about eight blocks, or taken a bus, or jumped in my car. That would have taken me to “The Avenue” (Eastern Avenue in Baltimore) where I would have had several choices:
First of all, there was a Woolworth’s. It was small, but it was a Woolworth’s, well stocked with anything needed for a simple sewing project: Threads, zippers, needles, little bits like bobbins for your sewing machine, buttons, even a small stock of dress patterns and fabric. It was all there. You could also get embroidery patterns and floss, yarn for your knitting (if you liked Red Heart)–whatever was needed. Just writing about Woolworth’s has brought back that “dime store smell,” a heady aroma compounded of slightly stale buttered popcorn and the Coca-Cola syrup they used to mix your drink at the soda fountain. (Soda fountain?)
A couple of blocks down, we had Epstein’s Department Store, a bastion for generations of Highlandtown women. You could buy anything at Epstein’s from the latest white French lace curtains for your front windows to complete school uniforms for your kids. Blue pants, white shirts, and blue ties are much the same everywhere, and you could get them at Epstein’s for a fraction of the cost of ordering them from the uniform supply people. Naturally they had a complete line of fabrics, supplies, and notions. You could get what you needed quickly and efficiently, get out, and still have time for lunch.
If neither of these options would do, there was a small but disorganized Jo-Ann’s about ten minutes away by car.
All of these places are now extinct, and I have to say I mourn their passing. If I want a piece of white chalk this afternoon, I can:
Drive twenty miles (40 miles round trip) to the nearest Giant JoAnn’s. And that includes tolls both ways. I’ll creep around the vast parking lot searching for a spot, and my bit of white chalk will have cost me $4 in tolls plus gas plus about two hours of my time. Not to mention the time spent in the store, which is the most disorganized place I’ve ever been and which has a surly manager.
Drive fifteen miles to Michael’s, which doesn’t really cater to people who sew but which may have something I can use. I can check at Target while I’m out there. You can get help at Michael’s–if they have what you are looking for. There are three aisles of sewing materials (no fabric) behind the ten or eleven aisles of artificial flowers.
Drive about ten miles to Wal-Mart. I’ll dodge the idiots in the parking lot, grab one of the square-wheeled carts (I may not fill it up, but I will lean on it), and charge into the fray. I’ll find my chalk in a quiet and surprisingly well equipped back corner of the store.¬† And I will say this about Wal-Mart: The ladies in the fabric department cut your fabric carefully. This differentiates them from the people at Giant JoAnn’s where I’ve never bought a piece of fabric there that was straight on grain. They just lay it up against their little ditches and cut.
The ladies at Epstein’s or Woolworth’s would have measured the cloth on a meter, cut a nick in it with a small blade, and torn it across, straight and true and ready to go. Sigh.
