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Caldor’s, Bradlees and Crazy Eddie’s …
When you go through old newspapers, you’re struck by how many retailers are no longer with us.
I’m not talking about the retailers that are still around but shadows of what they once were: I’m looking at you, Sears and Kmart. I’m talking about stores that were vital in the ‘70s and ‘80s and into the ‘90s and are long gone.
Caldor’s. Lechmere. Bradlees. Nobody Beats the Whiz. Crazy Eddie’s. Ames.
I could go on.
When I was looking up the old Black Friday stories from the ‘90s I edited, I saw every one of those names. They were all pretty big deals when I was growing up in the 1970s and the 1980s, and I still shopped in every one in 1995, with the exception of Crazy Eddie’s which imploded in 1989. Those stories drew a lot of shoppers even in 1995.
Probably the biggest one for me was Caldor’s, which was a department store located on a bluff overlooking my hometown and the go-to department store for my parents. Maybe we weren’t there every week, but it sure felt like it. And, in 1970s Connecticut, you could only go to a store like that six days a week because of the Blue Laws.
If you grew up in Connecticut or New York, you probably remember Caldor’s. The first store was opened in Port Chester, New York, in 1951 by a young couple, Carl and Dorothy Bennett. (Carl+Dorothy = Caldor). You wanted a baseball bat, you went to Caldor’s. You wanted a TV or a radio, you went to Caldor’s. You wanted a new coffeemaker, yep, you went to Caldor’s. They even had a stamp and coin counter at my local Caldor’s, and I still have some old stamps and first-day covers I bought there. And I bought a lot of 33RPMs at Caldor’s, too, before Tower Records came to Manhattan.
Good times.
There were other, slicker stores. Bradlees and especially Lechmere were better lit and had different items. (Plus Bradlees had Mrs. B in their ads. “Nobody can buy like Mrs. B,” they said.) Ames was also around but it didn’t really appeal to me much. I only went there when I had to, and I made sure, even in rural Maine when I lived there, that it wasn’t that often.
Neither Caldor’s nor Lechmere made it past the ‘90s. Bradlees closed in 2001 and Ames lasted until the next year. Nobody Beats The Wiz, from my Google search, closed in 2003.
What killed them? The shopping mall, Walmart and Target, and the early days of Amazon.com were factors. So were the overleveraged companies that bought them for too much when the future prospects were far too little. It’s fair to say that the retailing world moved on without them.
And while we didn’t know it back in ‘95, these stores days were numbered.
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Black Fridays I have known
“This isn’t your grandmother’s Black Friday.”
That was the headline on an email for journalists that I received earlier this week, suggesting new ways to cover the faux holiday.
I wasn’t aware my grandmothers, who died in 1994 and 2011 respectively, had Black Fridays. I’m sure that they went shopping, at least my maternal grandmother, who loved to shop. But I don’t recall, growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, a time when we all got up to shop on the day after Thanksgiving.
That isn’t to say we didn’t. If I remember, my mother and grandmother didn’t ever have to have an excuse to shop: My mom’s letters to my grandparents and me when she lived in Europe in the mid-80s were filled with long explanations of her shopping trips in Italy, Spain and Germany. And I certainly remember, and not with fondness, the many times I was dragged from store to store as they shopped.
But Black Friday, well, it wasn’t something I spent a lot of time thinking about. My former wife went out with her sisters on Black Friday, hunting for deals when we lived in New York. And my stepmother went shopping with her sister. My only Black Friday experience came when I went to a Staples to get a deal on a hard drive, 20 years ago.
I started covering business in the early ‘90s, when it very much was something we covered.
I don’t think I ever covered Black Friday as a reporter, but I certainly sent photographers and reporters out on the Friday after Thanksgiving to talk to shoppers and retailers about business. The first would have been 1994, the first two months or so that I had been hired as business editor of a daily newspaper near New York City. This newspaper, which was then one of a dying breed called an afternoon newspaper, published around noon weekdays and Saturdays. We didn’t have papers on major holidays like July 4, Christmas and yes, Thanksgiving.
Thanks to the magic of the Internet — and Google News Archive — I can revisit working at those newspapers whenever I want. And on Saturday, Nov. 26, 1994, Black Friday shopping was in fact the top, above-the-fold story in my newspaper.
That holiday season, 1994, was supposed to be a better than average shopping time with about a 6% increase in holiday spending over 1993, according to the story. Christmas 1993, the country was still in the grips of the recession that sank the Bush administration. Things were overall better a year later, but The New York metro area consumers our reporter found were still pretty cautious. He called it a “mixed bag” when he surveyed shoppers on that Friday in the shopping areas of Norwalk, Connecticut, and the trendy and upscale Westport, Connecticut.
“To be honest, everyone says it’s great (the economy), but I’m not so sure,” one woman told the reporter.
I don’t have any recollection of sending the reporter and photographer out, although I know I would have. And the next year, 1995, I did that again — and once again, Black Friday shopping was above the fold. But it was a slightly different story for Christmas 1995: The predictions going into the holiday season were for a drop of 11% on Christmas shopping that year.
“Shoppers are being more careful by looking for quality goods and hunting bargains,” the story said.
But neither the 1994 nor the 1995 stories had the words “Black Friday.” I don’t really ever recall using those words back in the ‘90s. Nor did the stories mention midnight Thanksgiving openings or even before dawn. The 1995 story, published the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 24, noted that the big-box stores of the time — all three long since closed all around — opened their doors at 7 a.m. and the parking lots weren’t necesssarily filled. What a far cry from a decade or two later, when stores would open Thanksgiving night.
A few years later, when I became the managing editor of a newspaper group, I continued sending reporters out on assignment on Black Friday. By then, they were stories worth doing because they weren’t just a temperature-taking of shopping habits but a measure of how local businesses were doing. Then, for another decade, I didn’t cover retailing or anything local, so Black Friday never came up.
According to my records— and a Google search I just did — the last time I used the words “Black Friday” was on Nov. 26, 2012, in a story. I haven’t needed to since: I don’t remember the last time I worked on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It’s a holiday where I work …
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60 years of Doctor Who
So I’m quite excited by this 60th anniversary special of “Doctor Who.” And having Paul McGann, who had the shortest run as The Doctor, was genius. I have loved this series long before I realized it was filmed in Wales …
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Getting used to AI as a writer
I’ve come down pretty hard against the new generative AI programs like ChatGPT, which didn’t have the best weekend in the offline world, did it? But I’ve also grudgingly used it.
We’re opening a dangerous chapter in history and, at some point, we’re going to have to come to terms with what AI might do to society. I’m thinking primarily of how it has the potential to destroy a lot of careers and lives in the process, just as the Industrial Revolution, the advent of the automobile and then the Computer Age. I have no desire, even as far along in my career as I am, of becoming the telegraph operator in the age of email. Or the horse-and-buggy driver competing against the Model T. And I can’t help but wonder whether AI will lead to even greater upheaval and potential existential crises down the line.
But put that aside, at least for a while. Some thinkers I admire say that concerns about AI are, either now or in the foreseeable future, overblown. In other words, we’re a long way from Skynet. So maybe I should spend less time wringing my hands and more time trying to understand the potential.
So, here goes.
I have a generative AI account. I haven’t been impressed, when you get right down to it, about some of its capabilities. I won’t use it, on principle, to write anything. That’s my job, and I’m OK with it, and I don’t want to give an inch on that.
But I realize that I’m not pure, either. Every time I use spell check or grammar check, I’m using AI. AI also helps when I book (or want to change) reservations on a travel website I have used. And as I’ve mentioned before, I sometimes use the AI editor on WordPress. It’s brought up some pretty good points, although it’s no substitute for a good editor.
Maybe some day.
I just used another type of AI to help me with what is time-consuming work when you’re a journalist: Transcribing an interview. I let the Microsoft Word transcribe feature run while I was doing an interview, at the same time I used another keyboard to type out my notes of the conversation. The results of the transcription made me wonder whether I really should even bother taking notes the way I have for so long.
Was it perfect? No. Was it better than I’ve seen from transcription in the past? Yes. Was it a major time saver, if only I would let it? Yes.
That’s the promise of AI, right? That I could use it to do things that would take me more time, so that I can spend them on other things that are higher value. That’s good for me, that’s good for my bosses, that’s good for the readers.
And that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
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This might be one of the best “Saturday Night Live” skits in a while ….
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No. 200
Yesterday’s post was a milestone for nowsandforevers, a blog I started a year ago next month, with one goal. It was a post, published Dec. 21, remembered a remarkable woman, my former wife, lost in 2022. I’ve kept going with the blog, on and off, ever since.
Now WordPress told me I’ve posted 200 times, in a little less than a year.
I’m a professional writer and journalist. I write thousands of words for publication five or six days a week, and thousands more that aren’t seen, either my own writing that may or may not get published or my journal. Nowsandforevers occupies a space between my professional and personal writing.
I couldn’t see the 200th post when I began this blog in late 2022. I certainly didn’t see I would continue to be writing at the end of 2023. And I don’t feel like stopping.
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Frank Borman
For me, there are only a handful of truly stirring moments on television. One is the Christmas Eve 1968 broadcast of Apollo 8, in orbit around the Moon, the first time human beings had ever left low-earth orbit.
Frank Borman, who died last week at age 95, was the commander of Apollo 8. It was overshadowed by Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon in July 1969. But if Borman and his crewmates Jim Lovell and Bill Anders hadn’t succeeded that December, then Neil Armstrong’s triumph wouldn’t have happened.
It’s clear 1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in recent American history: The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; the war in Vietnam; a bitter presidential campaign; and a lot of turmoil and protest and violence in the inner cities and college campuses across the country.
And yet at its end was Apollo 8, a daring mission to beat the Soviet Union around the moon and recapture the momentum of the space program and President Kennedy’s 1963 challenge after the death of three astronauts in a launchpad fire of Apollo 1 in January 1967.
To say Apollo 8 was dangerous was an understatement: Translunar injection and a trip around the Moon had never been attempted by humans before. It wasn’t even the mission Borman, Anders and Lovell had trained for. The mission changed and Borman and his crew not only adapted, they did it perfectly, paving the way for the Apollo 11 success.
I think, looking back, Borman was the perfect commander for that mission. He wasn’t an astronaut because he wanted to go to the Moon. He went because he wanted to make sure his country beat the Soviets there, he later told This American Life. Borman wasn’t there for the glory and he wasn’t there for the science. He was a patriot.
He just wanted to get the job done.
You get that sense reading Andrew Chaikin’s brilliant book, “A Man on the Moon,” and how he kept Lovell and Anders on track (and not looking out the window so much).
And still they captured that famous earth rise photograph. They were, after all, the first humans ever to see the back side of the moon.
It was, for a horrible year, a triumph the world — and not just the United States — could appreciate. Borman himself understood that, having received a card from someone that had three simple words:“You saved 1968.”
They did. And they also delivered one of the most important telecasts ever, their Christmas Eve broadcast where they read from “Genesis.” It’s stirring even if you aren’t religious. Knowing where they were, so far away, looking back at the world as they were broadcasting, well, it’s still amazing, 55 years later:
Bill Anders:
We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.Jim Lovell:
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.Frank Borman:
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear”: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of waters called he seas: and God saw that it was good.And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas — ad God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.
I was only an infant then. But when I first saw that clip, in the ‘70s, when I was starting to get interested in the space program, it sent chills down my spine.
It still does. I watch it every Christmas Eve. -
Going sideways
I have written more than 1,667 words a day, every day since Nov. 1. Just not on the WIP.
That’s making me sad, but it also can’t be helped. That’s one of the dangers of my job. I wrote a lot and I have written a lot this year. Just not always on what I intended ….
I have written more than 300,000 words this year on personal projects, so I am not that worried. I just won’t win NaNoWriMo this year.
Them’s the breaks.
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Watching the world wake up from history
I was born during the Vietnam War, came of age in the Cold War and 9/11 was a pivotal moment of my adulthood. The 21st century hasn’t been that great a time and it doesn’t look any better anytime soon.
At least I got to see the end of the Cold War. It didn’t end as tragically as all of us feared it might. When Jesus Jones sings about how knowing the world could change in a blink of an eye, that’s exactly what we knew.
Who thought it would change for the good in 1991?
And while the collapse of the Soviet Union laid the seeds for where we are today, there was a time in in the 1990s when it looked like we might have peace in our time.
The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union ended, as did the Soviet Bloc. We got peace in Northern Ireland, came awful close in the Middle East. And we had a long stretch of prosperity here in the United States. It wasn’t all perfect (Rwanda, Tianamen Square in ’89, Bosnia, the drugs and violence here in the USA to name a few). But it was as close as we have come in my lifetime.
We really did, as this Jesus Jones song from 1991, “Right Here Right Now” put it, watch the world wake up from history. It’s just too bad we couldn’t all take hold of it.
“I was alive and I waited for this.”
I remember nightmares of nuclear holocaust and how close we came. If you weren’t scared growing up, then you weren’t looking closely enough. But what Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev – two very unlikely peacemakers – ushered in, other men and women followed.
Where are their descendants now? I don’t see them.
It was, to live in that time, extraordinary. Maybe we didn’t fully appreciate it. Or realize it could be rolled away, within and without.
We should have.
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“Are You So Blind That You Cannot See?”
Being a devoted BBC World Service listener, I already knew who Nelson Mandela was and apartheid before The Special AKA came out with “Free Nelson Mandela” in 1984. But what made this song was that a whole lot of people knew about Nelson Mandela after hearing it.
I have come back to “Free Nelson Mandela” time and again, including cranking it loud in my apartment in 1990 when, finally, Nelson Mandela was freed. But I hadn’t seen this version til now.
Yeah, I should be writing. But it’s worth eight minutes to see the early version of this song.
Loved The Specials. Even if I wish I hadn’t lived to see one of their earliest, “Ghost Town,” played out in real life in 2020.
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About Me
Journalist and writer. Loves writing, storytelling, books, typewriters. Always trying to find my line. Oh, and here’s where I am now.
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