Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

If anyone ever forced me to wear one of those beanies, you can bet it would have a propeller.

I just discovered that Bokar coffee is no longer being produced. That's a real heartbreak. I also can't find A&P's other brands any longer - red circle and eight o'clock. I gather when A & P went out of business, they sold these brands, but now they're gone for good. Bokar and Eight O'Clock were absolutely wonderful, rich, flavorful coffees. So much more delicious (and more affordable) than some of the boutique brands in ubiquitous hipster coffee houses.

Last I looked Eight O'Clock was still around in the stores here -- the story was that when A&P decided to divest itself of some of its brands, they sold their whole coffee portfolio to some investment company. It's still the same blend, but it has "hip new packaging," whatever that means.

"Bokar" was an early triumph of the Boys From Marketing in creating a brand name that had no prior meaning whatsoever.

The complete disappearance of A&P is one of those things that would have been unthinkable in the 1930s. They were the Walmart of their day in terms of the impact they had in communities -- they'd storm in, rent a bunch of storefronts in an area, and have stores up and running in a matter of days. They'd cut-price independent grocers right out of business, and if any A&P didn't perform up to expectations, they'd shut it down with little or no notice and pull out of the neighborhood as though they'd never been there.



Note the pile of Eight O'Clock at 17 cents a pound, inside the store stacked in front of a monstrous poster of Kate Smith's face.

Wow, if I send you money will you ship me some Eight O'Clock??

I'm kidding, sort of, but not really.

I'll check to be sure it's still around -- I have to get tea today, so I'll be in that part of the store -- and let you know!

St. Louis said:

I just discovered that Bokar coffee is no longer being produced. That's a real heartbreak. I also can't find A&P's other brands any longer - red circle and eight o'clock. I gather when A & P went out of business, they sold these brands, but now they're gone for good. Bokar and Eight O'Clock were absolutely wonderful, rich, flavorful coffees. So much more delicious (and more affordable) than some of the boutique brands in ubiquitous hipster coffee houses.

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Are either of these what you are looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/Eight-OClock-Coffee-Original-12-Ounce/dp/B001E50THY

https://www.amazon.com/Eight-OClock-Coffee-Bokar-12-Ounce/dp/B001EQ4Q72

I think it's still available where we buy groceries and it's still grind it yourself, too, if I'm not mistaken.

It's somewhat refreshing, in a twisted way, to hear someone admit that the Walmart experience is nothing new, what with a big chain coming into town and "destroying" local merchants, which is what Walmart was in the beginning. The same thing was said of Sears even earlier and to some extent, it was true, not that the consumers cared much one way or the other where they spent their money. Other things are different, naturally, and perhaps the biggest thing is scale. The A&P in my home town was relatively small (relative to supermarkets today, that is). There was also a Kroger's, which was just about the same size. I think both are gone now but there are still places for people to buy their groceries. The newer stores will always tend to be outside of town where there's more room for a bigger building (a huge building, in fact) and a bigger parking lot (it's huge, too). It is true, however, that the big chains will devastate the local stores, particularly in groceries, hardware, clothing and general merchandise. And the big chains will be Johnny-on-the-spot when there is growth in a suburb or commuter town. Almost overnight there will be a new shopping center/strip mall with everything you need. Most will indeed be big box stores as well as a branch bank, a couple of fast food places, a couple of ethnic restaurants (Chinese of course and maybe Mexican--can be a chain), barber shop and so on. Maybe even a hotel.

Consumer habits change with the weather, it seems. Men and women don't seem to go to nice men's shops or lady's shops for their dress clothes, if in fact they still wear dress clothes. The hotel doesn't have a ballroom and dance band anymore (that disappeared about the time the passenger trains quit running) but they have free breakfast and Wi-Fi (or as clerk in a hotel in France said, "Wee-Fee." And it seems like all stores everywhere, even in small towns, are bigger than ever, possibly because they ate the little ones. Gone are the white table cloth restaurants and diners with blue plate specials. Here to stay are Subways, McDonalds, Applebee's and Ruby Tuesdays. Nice places, actually, and some have bars.

There was a guy in the late twenties and early thirties named W. K. Henderson, who owned a radio station in Shreveport, Louisana, whose one and only reason for putting the station on the air was to have a personal forum from which to attack chain stores, which he believed were of the Devil. He'd go on the air over KWKH every night, opening his broadcast with a very ominous-sounding "Hello world! This is W. K. Henderson talkin' to yewwwwwwww..." and would then extemporaneously rant for the next hour about chain stores. Many people really, really hated chain stores, and Henderson's broadcasts were very popular.

I still regularly buy Eight O'Clock coffees at my local WalMart and ShopRite here... and they're generally cheaper than they were at A&P! But I haven't seen the Bokar variety in a while. My standard varieties are the ground French Roast for rushed workday morning use, and whole bean Central Highlands for grinding on weekends.

Mr. Henderson may not have liked company stores located not far from where I grew up. They were owned and operated by the coal companies, same people who owned the houses the miners lived in and of course, they were "out of state" corporations.

Wonder if any of these Walmart haters ever lived in a small town and had to put up with those "friendly" small town store keepers as I did. If you want dingy badly lighted stores half filled with overpriced merchandise nobody wants, run by a guy with an ingrown disposition that's what you got.

Oh god the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the first mall came to town in the late sixties. They fought tooth and nail to prevent it, one town blocked it so effectively they built the place in the next town, 5 miles away.

Sure enough clean well lighted stores full of good merchandise that people wanted to buy at good prices were an irresistable draw. Everyone from miles around went to the new mall to shop.

Then a funny thing happened. After about six months the novelty wore off and people started shopping downtown again. Plus a lot of other people that were drawn to town by the new mall. The downtown stores were busier than ever BUT only the ones that smartened up and worked to compete with the new mall, and offered what their customers wanted to buy.

And the town 5 miles over, where the downtown merchants banded together and spent $100,000 blocking the mall? It died on the vine. Nobody went there anymore, they all went to the town with the mall.

When Walmart opened it didn't seem to affect downtown at all, but half the stores in the mall went out of business. Today Sears Kmart and Zellers are shadows of their former selves if they are around at all.

Same thing when Home Depot opened up. I looked forward to a wider selection at low prices compared to local hardware stores and was disappointed. Sure they have lots of stuff but the quality is low the prices are high and you have to tramp miles to find anything. The hell with that. I go to the local hardware store and lumber yard whenever possible.

The Sears Hardware in the county seat is about to close if it hasn't already & the Kmart in town is currently having a going out of business sale. Besides moving some departments around& stopping the sale of guns & ammo, the Kmart looks exactly the same as it did when we moved up here in 88.

We had an excellent downtown hardware store that had been in the same location for nearly a hundred years when it shut down in the early '90s. I never had a problem finding what I wanted, especially some obscure bit of something or other that had been in stock since the thirties. They'd go into the back room, blow the dust off the shelf, and I'd have it. I still use the soldering kit I bought there in 1986.

Our downtown department store was a good place to get slips, girdles, garter belts, cotton stockings, and other obscure and unfashionable bits of underwear that you'll never, ever see at Walmart. That store also disappeared when the Bentonville Terror arrived here in the '90s.

Our Newberry's dime store, while a chain operation, was a cheap and friendly place to get lunch, and much neater and better-organized than our Walmart ever was. (Walmart pulled out of here three years ago and moved to the next town because the city wouldn't let them expand into a protected wetland. Abandoned Walmarts are kind of a thing here in Maine.)

Do scenic spots still have coin-operated pedestal-mounted binoculars? I don't remember whenI last saw one.

Inkstainedwretch said:

Do scenic spots still have coin-operated pedestal-mounted binoculars? I don't remember whenI last saw one.

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They are still there at the Mt Mitchill Scenic Overlook, Atlantic Highlands NJ.

My old childhood fishing hole , the best bass fishing in my life, it's a out of the way place out in the country next to a cattle ranch down a levee road with a small dam.

they put up "no trespassing signs" and have locked the gate, they closed the road to the public maybe 20 years ago? the only people that have access now are the farmers and field workers that still have access, they have it all to themselves now.

Haven't seen one of these in working, or any condition in a long time, as a matter of fact, I think the last one bit the dust when City Service Gasoline became Citgo.

^ The last time I saw anything close to that, it was attached to the wall of a men's room in a restaurant. For $1 you had your choice between condoms, cheap after shave, breath mints, or chewing gum.

^^^^
Written on the wall next to a similar fixture ...

"Don't buy this gum! It tastes like rubber!"

Zombie_61 said:

^ The last time I saw anything close to that, it was attached to the wall of a men's room in a restaurant. For $1 you had your choice between condoms, cheap after shave, breath mints, or chewing gum.

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Let me put it this way, if you needed any of the 4 items, you probably needed them all.