(This article first appeared in the June print issue of the Hendersonian)
There’s a group I enjoy on Facebook titled “I grew up in Henderson and remember …”
I didn’t grow up in Henderson — my wife and I have lived here for only 44 years — but I still enjoy others’ recollections of 42420 before our time here.
In a recent post, somebody shared a 1959 photo of Woods Rexall Drugs in Eastgate Shopping Center. This was a small revelation to me; I knew of a couple of Rexalls downtown, but I never knew of one in Eastgate (though in fairness, I was only 2 when this photo was taken).
Still, I harbor a small but enduring interest in Rexall stores. It was at a Rexall as a kid that I discovered rock candy, which is no small thing.
What further captured my attention was a post by a friend who reported that his father ran a Ben Franklin five-and-dime store next door to the Rexall from 1959 to 1965. That Ben Franklin closed, he said, though another Ben Franklin opened in a former W. T. Grant discount department store that’s now occupied by One Life Church Henderson.
At last, I had some footing. I remember the Ben Franklin store at that corner of Eastgate. It was managed by Paul Fritz and was convenient to my old office at The Gleaner, so I shopped there fairly regularly. As a young husband, I shopped for my first tomato plants and petunias at Ben Franklin, which gave me my first gardening experience. The Ben Franklin had a little bit of everything, so I often dropped by when I needed anything.
But here’s the bigger thing: We have just discussed three former retailing giants of the 20th century that are mere ghosts today. Consider:
Rexall and its orange-and-blue signs once were ubiquitous across America. It was a chain of locally owned franchises that, according to Wikipedia, peaked at 11,158 stores in 1958 — nearly rivaling the number of McDonald’s in the U.S. today — but suffered a breathtaking decline over the next two decades as corporate pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreen’s overtook them. You can still find Rexall drug stores in Canada, and Rexall-branded products at Dollar General stores. But if Google Maps has it right, there are just 15 surviving Rexall stores in the U.S.
Another franchised chain, Ben Franklin Stores was, in its day, no slouch, either. Walmart founder Sam Walton got his start in retailing by buying a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, in 1945. There once were a few thousand small-town locations, which made their name selling crafts supplies. But by the 1990s, it faced overwhelming pressure from competitors such as, well, Walmart. The parent company went bankrupt, our store closed and, well, that was that.
W. T. Grant (popularly referred to as Grants) was another mass-merchandise discounter that thrived, and then dived (into bankruptcy), in the 1970s. Yet founder William T. Grant amassed enough of a fortune that his charitable foundation exists to this day and, as of 2022, reported an endowment of nearly $373 million. Not bad.
So Eastgate, little Henderson’s first suburban strip shopping center, once was home to three legendary national retail chains that have since practically vanished from the American landscape.
But Henderson has shared in witnessing the evaporation of other commercial institutions, roadside sights and things that once seemed immovable. Friends, I give you:
Sears Roebuck
As late as the 1980s, Sears had a store and auto center in Eastgate Shopping Center, though that Sears largely presented itself as a “catalog store.” Many households once regularly received a printed catalog the size of a New York City phone book featuring tens of thousands of products ranging from hardware to furniture to toys to appliances to clothing (particularly during the 1970s) of questionable and decidedly temporary taste.
While Sears built its fortune as a mail-order house, a Henderson consumer could visit the Eastgate store, pick up a telephone that served as a hotline to the Sears mother ship in Chicago and place an order by voice. I saw those phones, but never placed an order, which I suppose one did using their Sears credit card (which I once had).
A&P
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company was, in the first three-quarters of the 20th century, a grocery juggernaut. It built a supermarket at the corner of First and Green streets in Henderson using a peaked façade that I recognized from an A&P in my hometown.
Once, there was a joke that A&P was so vast an enterprise that it had vice presidents for both pitted and unpitted prunes.
But eventually, even A&P cratered. By the time we got here, it was home to a hometown Key supermarket, which we loved (and miss).
A few other things once thought permanent that people in 42420 have seen vanish?
• Rotary dial telephones
• Phone booths
• Phone books
• Operators
• Burger Chef
• Burger Queen
• Howard Johnson’s restaurants (and fried clam strips).
• Newberry’s Five & Dime
• Woolworth’s
• Kmart
• A dairy
• Saturday morning cartoon shows
• Daytime World Series games
• Afternoon (and darned-near morning) newspapers
And, perhaps most painful of all, drugstore soda fountains.
