Blue Light Special on Nostalgia

As I was posting the news earlier this week about the closing of the last KMart store in the US, I started thinking back to the good memories that I associate with the old department store. To some, it may sound silly to have a fondness for things like department stores, but sometimes they represent good times in our lives. Here’s how I’ll always remember KMart.

As I was growing up in Southwest Virginia in the ’80s, my small town didn’t have any department stores. All we had was a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, a couple of gas stations, and what we referred to as “the junk store”, which was kind of a throwback to old general stores in that it sold hardware, farming supplies, and other odds and ends.

The closest town to us that had department stores was 15 miles away, so that’s where we went on the weekends for mom to do her shopping for things we needed around home. At the time, there were only two stores in that town… Roses, and Singletons. Roses was a small chain in this part of the country, and Singletons was locally owned. Now I enjoyed going to both, mainly because they had toy departments. They both represent fond memories for me as it’s where most of my Masters of the Universe and GI Joe toys came from in the early days of my fandom.

Then around 1989, a brand new KMart opened in that town. The new store stood in stark contrast to the other two department stores. It was new, and it looked new, smelled new, and felt new. It was bigger than the other two stores in town as well. Almost twice the size of either of the others. It was an instant hit in town and instantly became our “go-to” store when out shopping on the weekends.

I was of the age that I could roam around the store on my own while mom shopped, and I had several favorite departments to wander around in. There was the toy department of course that boasted six aisles worth of childhood dreams. Our two old department stores only had 3 aisles of toys each, so this meant KMart had more toys to offer and a larger quantity of the toys they carried. I remember their LEGO selection being really nice, as I could always find the sets I had seen advertised on the shelves at KMart. It’s where I picked up my first sets of the “Space Police” series, the Lego City Hospital, and several fire truck sets.

The new KMart also carried model car kits along with all of the accessories needed like the little bottles of paint, glue, and brushes for making a really nice-looking model. The other two stores never carried model kits.

It also sold trading cards, which was a departure from the other two stores. Back then, my trading card choices were very limited, as I only had the Piggly Wiggly in my town which would have one or two sets from which to buy packs and Venables (a gas station) that may or may not have any cards for sale at a given time. But this KMart had pretty much everything that was on the trading card market for sale. This is where my love of trading cards really took off as I could pick from all kinds of sets from which to buy packs of.

For a little while in 1992, the trading card section would be the focal point of my interests as my dad and my bother both got into collecting cards briefly. We were all feverishly buying 1992 Topps Stadium Club baseball cards and Skybox football cards in an attempt to be the first to complete sets. I was at a severe disadvantage financially though as my brother had a job, my dad did too obviously, but I was dependent on a small allowance and couldn’t compete. I was like the small-market baseball team while they were the equivalent of the Yankees.

I would also frequent the sporting goods section checking out all of the fringe sports equipment. Things like darts, ping pong, yard toys, and the like. I don’t remember ever buying much in the way of sporting goods, but I could kill a good 15 minutes just browsing that section of the store.

My favorite part of this new KMart was the book section. Now this wasn’t like a book section you see in department stores today, heck, it wasn’t even like book sections you would see back then. It was a section near the middle of the store with high walls behind the perimeter shelves, and standing “islands” of shelves throughout the middle of it. Kind of like a miniature Barnes & Noble dropped into the middle of this KMart.

We didn’t have bookstores in this rural part of the country. The closest I had ever come to a bookstore was the yearly book fair at school. I would spend the majority of my time in the book section at KMart browsing through all kinds of books. I would stand and read through the old Garfield comic strip books, sample kids books of the time like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and see if could find Waldo. And I would flip through tons of magazines there. They carried all of the wrestling magazines on the market, and I could have spent a whole day plopped down on the floor reading through all of them if allowed.

They also sold comic books in this book section. They didn’t have all of the titles, but they had a lot. Most of the main DC and Marvel books were there for purchase, and a young comic book fan could find plenty to be happy about.

I would also make my way to the electronics section to spend some time on every visit, browsing through all of the cassette tapes and the new hot trend on the market, CDs. This KMart is where I would pick up the 2 Live Crew single “Banned in the USA” which would result in an event at home that I’ll talk about here at some point in the future.

I would also browse the selection of VHS movies hoping my mom would come by for me to point one out for her to buy and take home with us. That was always my hope, but the reality is that Mom wasn’t going to be buying movies to take home. That’s what blank tapes and cable TV were for. Find a movie you like and record it at home. It was the equivalent of asking your mom for a Happy Meal and her saying she could fix a burger at home.

The only times I would visit the clothing sections was when it was time to buy new school clothes. Since KMart was the newest and the biggest store around, my school clothes came from there for a few years. But they carried some fun stuff. I could get t-shirts with Disney characters on them, or other characters from other properties. Anything was better than a shirt with an alligator on it in those days.

I don’t want to miss mentioning the Blue Light Specials at KMart. When I was in the store, and that announcement would come over the intercom, I would make a dash to the area of the store where the Blue Light Special was taking place. Forget the fact that I rarely had money, nor an interest in whatever home good they were hawking at the time, I just wanted to be a part of the “event”. Watching all of the other shoppers hurriedly gather around hoping to get in on the special deal was always fun to me.

But no trip to KMart was complete without a stop at the K Cafe…the in-house snack bar that this new KMart boasted. While the food was never top-notch, nothing compared to the great smell that wafted throughout the store from the snack bar. The smells of hot dogs, popcorn, and slushies all mingled together to create a heavenly scent. On occasion, I would get popcorn from there, but almost always got a red slushie on the way out the door at the end of a shopping trip.

Going to this KMart represented the first time in my young life that my mom would wait on me. We would go into the store, and she would say that we would meet back on the bench up front. Even those times that she didn’t have much shopping to do and would finish quickly, she’d never rush me. She would let me do my browsing and make my way to the front of the store when I was ready. Many times, I would get to the front of the store to find her sitting patiently on the bench just waiting for me. Other times, the reverse was true as I would be sitting and waiting for her.

She and I would go to KMart most Saturday afternoons. While I thoroughly enjoyed browsing the many sections of the store that brought me joy, it’s the trips with my mom that the store represents to me, and why I hold it in high regard to this day. So goodbye KMart my old friend, thanks for being there for me and helping my Saturdays with mom special.

And that’s the way it was,
Mick