A Narrative From When I Was Tiny

Back when my raging social anxiety and moderate misanthropy were my only obstacles to in-person social interaction, I would often be asked how my interest in tracking down the surviving locations of mostly defunct restaurant, and occasionally, retail chains began. In many answerings of this and similar questions, I honed a boilerplate response that would be something to the effect of, “I liked to eat at Taco Tico and G.D. Ritzy’s when I was a kid in the ‘90s in Kentucky. All the locations of those two chains near me closed at around the same time, and when I discovered, years later, that there were surviving locations of both chains, it made me wonder what other survivors may be out there.” I’d then credit the late, great Evil Sam Graham’s work in the fast food blogosphere for being my inspiration to document my adventures in writing, and then excuse myself from the conversation as graciously as possible in accordance with the aforementioned social anxiety and my strict upbringing in a culture of honor. 

While my carefully crafted response was the truth and nothing but the truth, however, it did not reflect the whole truth. It showcased merely the most prominent threads in the tapestry of my fixation on anachronistic restaurants and stores. In actuality, a veritable panoply of experiences led to me becoming the very specific type of nerd that I am today, and since I can’t exactly take a multistate road trip to eat inside a restaurant without posing a significant risk to myself and others these days, I thought I’d reminisce about one of my earliest experiences visiting a surviving location of a broken chain instead. 

It was my Aunt Sis who introduced me to G.D. Ritzy’s in the early 1990s, shortly before it became a broken chain. She was often gracious enough to take me and my younger brother on various outings, not only to G.D. Ritzy’s but also to movies and on Christmas shopping trips anytime my parents required respite from the daily horrors of raising children. One day out with Aunt Sis in particular sticks out in my mind as one of my earliest, perhaps my first encounter with what was then a broken chain. 

During my elementary school years, Aunt Sis’s mother, my paternal grandmother, Granny Nova Scotia Actionsdower was in her late 70s, living alone in Stanford, Kentucky. My father and aunt would each try and make the drive down from the Lexington area once a week to check in on her and help with household chores, as did her other son, my uncle, and my numerous adult cousins, all of whom lived nearby in and around Stanford. On a spring day in the mid 1990s, Aunt Sis saw fit to bring me along on a trip to Granny Nova Scotia's house instead of our usual lunch and movie, perhaps in an effort to assassinate two proverbial pigeons with the same pyrite. Even in her prime, Granny was a mediocre driver, and she relied on friends and family to chauffeur her on out of town excursions by the time she was deep into her retirement years. 

Granny was an avid collector of S&H Green Stamps, trading stamps used as a marketing tool by various small businesses to various extents throughout the 20th century and to almost no extent by the dawn of the 21st. The stamps were sold in bulk to business owners who would then give them out to customers in proportion to the dollar amount of their transactions in an effort to attract new customers and encourage existing ones to spend more. Customers then collected the stamps, often pasting them by the hundred in special green stamp books. They could then trade them for items from the S&H Green Stamp catalogs as well as brick and mortar Green Stamp stores. If you’ve ever saved Pepsi points, Camel Cash, or any chain restaurant loyalty points, the concept is similar, except, multiple unrelated businesses gave out Green Stamps and/or other brands of trading stamps regardless of which items a customer purchased. Trading stamps gradually began to fall out of fashion in the 1970s, and things like rewards credit cards serve a similar function today. 

Back in the mid 1990s with Aunt Sis and Granny Nova Scotia, Green Stamps still existed, but were clearly a relic of another time and not long for this world, not unlike Granny Nova Scotia herself. The only business I ever witnessed handing out Green Stamps was the bizarrely old fashioned pharmacy in my hometown that still had a working art deco soda fountain and lunch counter and shelves stocked with decades-old brittle and yellowed packages of Brylcreem and Ipana. Naturally, Granny Nova Scotia enlisted my father to have all of her prescriptions filled by the crusty old pharmacist who ran the place just like his crustier older father before him so she could reap the Green Stamp rewards. She had likewise enlisted Aunt Sis to drive her 35 miles south to Somerset Kentucky on the day in question, with me in tow, to the nearest Green Stamp store, which had recently announced its impeding permanent closure. 

Truth be told, I don’t remember much about the visit to the store itself other than vague memories of standing in a long line amid half-bare shelves in some tiny, nondescript storefront in a strip mall, but the experience gave me a lasting appreciation of the then vanishing, now extinct, concept of trading stamps and perhaps also instilled in me an interest in tracking down the businesses that offer a glimpse into a different time, and whose brands still manage to exist in some small way despite overwhelming odds to the contrary. It was then that I had my earliest inkling about the broken chains that may still be out there hiding in plain sight. I like to think I had the foresight to make a mental note to look into that 20 to 25 years later, but I very likely didn't. 

As if to really emphasize the lesson that a handful surviving locations of a chain often last long past the majority of their brethren, our next stop after Granny cashed in her Green Stamps was at the Somerset Kmart. Granny At the time, Kmart was still a relevant retail brand, merely approaching the precipice of its ultimate decline, but I recall the visit to that Kmart being a nostalgic experience for me even at the tender age of 8 or 9 since the only Kmart my family would ever visit with any regularity was the one in Nicholasville which had closed a year or two before. 

It was late in 2018  when I learned that the Somerset Kmart was still open for business, and was the only Kmart I had visited as a child that was still in operation. It was Memorial Day weekend 2019 by the time I paid the store a visit, which turned out to be well-timed, as its liquidation and closure were announced only a few weeks later, along with the only other surviving Kentucky Kmart in Erlanger. I’ve visited and documented many doomed Kmarts over the years, and I took a walk through the store executing the routine photography protocol I had developed over the course of countless Kmart runs. I was saving the pictures for a rainy day, and since this year has been a deluge, now seems as good a time as any to share images of the Somerset Kmart near the end. 

A sign adorned with branded word salad greeted me in the parking lot.

The exterior was in decent shape by Kmart standards. 

These cart corral signs are usually weathered and faded, not so here. 

The garden center was even operational, a rarity at the time. I'd be surprised to hear there are any Kmarts that still have operational garden centers these days. 

There might still be a Kmart pharmacy or two kicking around though. 

More Pharmacy marked by classic Kmart signage.

It's been a year and a half, so I can't be sure, but I think I took this picture so I could mention that the alleged discount price was dropped from a grossly inflated one, and was still comparatively high. I had bought a comparable freezer from Menards earlier that year at full price, which was well below $200. 

More classic, if inaccurate signage. I haven't seen actual music and video in a Kmart music and video section in years. 

Most Kmarts have these giant round ceiling vents. I try to photograph one in every store I visit. I remember seeing them in more places years ago, but they've mostly vanished from everywhere but Kmart thanks to their perpetually delayed store upgrades and maintenance.  

Starting around the 2018 bankruptcy, Sears and Kmart really had trouble convincing their suppliers they could pay for merchandise. Bare shelves abounded as a result. 

This is the typical appearance of a Kmart soft drink aisle. This picture is from the spring of 2019, long before panic buying became a thing. 

This was a blatant lie, unless they meant that the sales floor would be completely empty and the store closed by the end of the year. 

The Die Hard automotive battery shelf has been nearly empty at every Kmart I've visited in recent memory. One of Sears/Kmart's last assets of any value, the Die Hard brand has since been sold to Advance Auto Parts as part of CEO Eddie Lampert's years-long quest to profit off the lumbering decline of the Sears and Kmart brands. 

Again, it was late May in Kentucky on the day of my visit. The temperature outside was close to 90 degrees, but the Somerset Kmart had plenty of rock salt and snow shovels for sale at full price. 

Plastic totes spread out to hide bare shelves; this was a common site at many of the Kmarts I've visited. It probably still is, but I haven't been to a Kmart in almost a year. 

The Layaway counter likely looked exactly as it did when I was last here during the first term of the Clinton administration. 

Every Kmart has a breakfast nook on display. Who buys them? Nobody knows. 

It wasn't all snow shovels and rock salt. To their credit, they did have a nice display of patio furniture and Kenmore-branded grills. I don't believe Fast Eddie has sold off the Kenmore brand... yet. 

Florescent lighting always looks bleakest in a Kmart. 

As with all my Kmart visits, I try to spend a little money while I'm there gawking. 

The furniture department didn't look half bad. 

This was once the in-store cafe. It was off to one side, though I remember it being at the back of the store. I'm probably wrong though. I was only there once 25 years ago. 

But that’s not all! In January of this year, my beloved Esmeralda Fitzmonster and I took a trip to South Florida, and we managed to visit two of the three operating Kmarts in the Florida Keys. Most people would probably regret spending their last vacation in the final carefree days before cataclysm gripped the world shopping at Kmart, but I am not most people, and Esmeralda was and continues to be a good sport about my various quirks and flaws. In accordance with Broken Chains year-end tradition, below are a selection of photos of those two island Kmarts, who along with around 35 other locations spread far and wide across the U.S. and its territories are the last that have managed to stay in operation. 

Kmart in Key Largo; not pictured are the wild chickens that roamed the parking lot. 

It was the first time I had encountered these cylindrical department signs. They're apparently part of a rare decor package, and I'm the kind of guy who gets excited about that type of thing. 

Remember before when I said every Kmart had a breakfast nook on display? The one in Somerset was $100 cheaper. 

Another rare, if inaccurate, cylindrical department sign. 

The Marathon Kmart is unique in that it has a massive section of the store devoted to fishing equipment and is adorned with an ocean-themed mural. 

Mural detail 

They still had plenty of Christmas wrapping paper out on MLK Day weekend, but it was at least marked down. 

The Kmarts in the Keys were among the nicest I've visited in recent memory. While definitely dated, they still felt functional, serving tourists and locals alike. Hopefully the lack of competition in the area will keep the Key Largo, Marathon, and Key West Kmarts going a while longer. 

That's it for 2020 blog posts. I'm going to try to post at least once per month moving forward, and I hope to be able to hit the road again and return to something closer to my five post per month schedule once things are a little more normal, hopefully sometime in 2021. Thanks for sticking with me during the weird times. 

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store

Tiny Narratives '19

Throughout the year, I travel far and wide in search of places I can write about that fit the Broken Chains theme. Occasionally, however, I have experiences that don't quite warrant an entire blog post, so at the end of the year, I stick them together to create a single Katamari-like post about these minor experiences. It's an idea I lifted directly from the podcast, 99% Invisible, whose contributors put out an annual Mini Stories episode in late December every year. Just as Rax calls their Arby's-inspired curly fries twisty fries, I call my 99% Invisible-inspired mini stories post Tiny Narratives.

Trivial Journey: Cinnamon's

When coming up with topics to write about here, a well I return to frequently is chain restaurants of my youth that I haven't seen operating anywhere in a long time. More often than not, at least one location is operating somewhere. I pulled the name T.J. Cinnamons out of the recesses of my memory during a brainstorming session one day. The Cinnabon-like chain founded in 1985, the same year as Cinnabon, operated primarily out of shopping mall food court slots. Following a buyout by Arby's in 1996, T.J. Cinnamon's items began showing up on Arby's menus, and the mall-based locations began to disappear. Arby's bounced around to different parent companies during the past decade, and T.J. Cinnamon's got lost in the shuffle. The Wendy's Company owns the T.J. Cinnamon's brand now, but Arby's is owned by Roark Capital Group, who also owns Cinnabon. Wendy's seems to be doing nothing with the brand, and Cinnabon menu items haven't made it into Arby's yet. Meanwhile, T.J. Cinnamon's seems to be all but a dead brand. It has no website or social media pages, and a list of locations is nowhere to be found online.

Still, I suspected there was at least one Arby's still selling T.J. Cinnamons cinnamon rolls, and I was determined to find it. Some Googling revealed that a few Arby's locations in the Morgantown, West Virginia area were still listed as T.J. Cinnamon's locations, and while in the area, I stopped by one of them to investigate.

A '90s built Arby's, with a complete lack of T.J. Cinnamons signage. 

Upon arrival, in Morgantown, I found a fairly standard Arby's with no T.J. Cinnamons signage, and no cinnamon rolls on the menu. I ordered a chocolate shake in defeat, but not before noticing photos by the counter of kids' baseball teams that the local Arby's franchisee had sponsored. Some photos listed Arby's as a sponsor, while others listed T.J. Cinnamon's. Based on these photos, this Arby's had been selling T.J. Cinnamons items at least as recently as 2008, and perhaps later.

 What's more American than baseball, roast beef sandwiches, and cinnamon rolls?

I can't help but think that T.J. Cinnamons is extinct however. I doubt any Arby's franchisee is able to procure whatever proprietary prefab dough product the T.J. Cinnamons brand used, nor is any Arby's franchisee willing to have their employees make a facsimile of a T.J. Cinnamon's cinnamon roll from scratch. Still, there's an Arby's in Albuquerque that's listed as still being a T.J. Cinnamons location. My Broken Chains-related travel hasn't taken me west of Tornado Alley yet, but if I do ever find myself exploring the broken chains of the Land of Enchantment, I'll plan a stop at that Albuquerque Arby's on the off chance it's also the world's last T.J. Cinnamon's.

RetRAXion

While we're on the subject of Arby's, let's talk about this one in Corbin, Kentucky. You may recall that I encountered it last year on the way home from the very first Raxgiving at the Harlan, Kentucky Rax. I mentioned in that post that this Arby's is a former Rax. That turned out to be incorrect. The Raxgiving event I put together this year caught the attention of the owner of the Harlan Rax, who kindly informed me that this Arby's had always been an Arby's, and he knew that to be the case, as his original Rax franchise agreement included exclusive rights to operate in Corbin. No one else could open a Rax there, and neither did he. He did mention, however, that Rax architecture may have influenced the design of this particular Arby's location. Sadly, this Arby's has since been closed, and I believe demolished following the construction of a new Arby's just up the road. 

I'd Rather Sonic, Wouldn't You? 

Admittedly, this year's Tiny Narratives is Arby's/Rax-heavy. I swear I didn't plan it that way. At one point during the year, I had plans to write a post documenting former Rax buildings I had encountered. That post didn't come to fruition for a variety of reasons, but in researching it, I did encounter a fast food architectural oddity too weird to not mention.

Athens, Ohio is home to a bizarre carhop-less Sonic location that's housed in a former Rax building. Furthermore, it's a relatively uncommon variation on the Rax design that features a solarium on one side of the dining room rather than protruding out the front. In Sonic guise, the old Rax originally featured phones at each table from which customers could place orders, but during my visit over the summer, the phones had been removed, forcing patrons to awkwardly order from a tiny menu board next to a similarly diminutive order counter. 

Weirdest. Sonic. Ever. 

And an unusual Rax design to boot. 

That's the menu board on the right under the Sonic To Go signage. The order counter is on the left. 

There's not much more to say about Rax-Sonic other than, "Weird, right?" so this oddball Sonic ended up in the Tiny Narratives file.

There Once Was a Mascot From Nantucket...

If you're reading this blog, you're probably more familiar with legacy fast food mascots than the average person. You're also likely to recognize Speedee, the original McDonald's mascot who predates Ronald by a solid 15 years. Following my post commenting on the similarities between the Ritzee Hamburgs and G.D. Ritzy's mascots, Sef "Burger Beast" Gonzalez reached out to me regarding a near forgotten mascot that appears to have inspired Speedee. 

Meet Downyflake Dan, mascot for Downyflake Donuts, who according to Sef's research appeared in newspapers as early as 1947 while Richard and Maurice McDonald didn't begin using Speedee as the mascot for their revamped burger stand using the Speedee System until 1948. As you can see, the only significant difference between Downyflake Dan and Speedee is that their large round craniums are made of a donut and a hamburger, respectively. Is this a case of plagiarism, or both companies using an ad agency with a lazy art director? The answer to that question seems to be lost to history.

There's still a Downyflake in operation in (on?) Nantucket, Massachusetts, but they haven't returned my emails regarding their mascot. Maybe they don't know anything about it. My Broken Chains travels haven't taken me too far up the east coast, but if I'm ever in Nantucket, I'll stop in at the Downyflake and ask about Dan.  

Blue Lights Fade Ever Dimmer

Go toward the light, Kmart!

To my complete surprise, Kmart still exists. Sure, after the latest round of store closures set to wrap up in February, there will only be 59 US locations left, scattered haphazardly across multiple non-contiguous American states and territories. And sure, those locations are by and large as dated and dilapidated as the stores that have closed before them. And sure, Kmarts corporate sibling Sears isn't fairing much better, and will soon be down to 111 total US locations according to the handy map of surviving locations put together by Dead and Dying Retail, but any other retailer in Sears/Kmart's position would have called it quits years ago.

According to at least one commentator, there's no real business case for keeping Sears and Kmart in business, and the only reason they still exist is to nurse the bruised ego of their one-time CEO and current majority shareholder Eddie Lampert, whose pattern of mismanagement and apparent strategy of slowly stripping both brands for parts has forced both Sears and Kmart into a hyperbolic function of constantly approaching, but never reaching the point of complete liquidation. I can't help but suspect I'll be writing about some smaller, yet still extant remnant of the Kmart chain next year as well as Sears and Kmart continue to shamble irrelevantly through the increasingly bleak brick and mortar landscape.

As with last year's Tiny Narratives post, I'll wrap this post up with pictures of Kmart locations I've visited this year. Unless otherwise noted, all locations shown have closed or are in the process of closing.

Somerset, Kentucky
This was the last surviving Kmart that I remember visiting as a child. It was one of only two still open in Kentucky when I came back as a childish adult this past spring.

The other of the final two Kentucky Kmarts was in Erlanger, just south of Cincinatti. There are now no Sears or Kmart stores left in Kentucky. 

The other surviving Cincinnati-area Kmart was in Harrison, Ohio, housed in a former Rink's discount store. 

It was on a trip to the Grove City, Ohio Kmart that I discovered the Rally's across the street that used to be a Ritzy's. Ohio will soon have no Kmart locations left, and only a single Sears.

In North Dakota, the Fargo Kmart has met its demise like so many characters in the film and TV show of the same
name. 

Its counterpart in Bismarck, North Dakota will soon do the same, leaving the Minot location as the last Kmart between Minneapolis and Western Montana.

The Warsaw Kmart was among the last in Indiana.

As was the Valparaiso Kmart. Indiana now has no surviving Sears or Kmart locations.

And yet, the Marshall, Michigan Kmart remains open with no immediate plans to close. It will soon be the last Kmart in Michigan, the state where the Kmart Corporation was once based. It's a little rough around the edges, but not in bad shape for a Kmart. It even has an operating Little Caesar's inside it.

Broken Chains on Facebook

Broken Chains Store