Walking Through a 1981 RadioShack — Shelf by Shelf

Walking Through a 1981 RadioShack — Shelf by Shelf Saturday, the 3rd of October, 1981. Twenty past ten in the morning, in a strip mall off a state road, four doors down from a laundromat and two doors up from a place that cuts keys. The store is about the size of a two-car garage, and there is a window full of stereo equipment with handwritten price cards propped against it. In the wallet of the man walking in, behind his driver's license, there is a small card with twelve little boxes printed on it and nine of them punched. It entitles him to one free battery a month. He has not missed a month since 1978. This was the store every father in America stopped at on a Saturday. One room, a wall of drawers at the back, a counter with a man behind it, and somewhere in that room, whatever small electrical thing you needed. We are going to walk through it in the order you would actually have walked through it, starting at the door and finishing at the register. We are not skipping a shelf.