Walking Through a 1978 Simpsons-Sears — Aisle by Aisle

Saturday, the 7th of October, 1978. The Saturday before Thanksgiving. A quarter past nine in the morning, in a parking lot at the edge of a shopping centre, with frost still on the windshields and a row of snowblowers chained up by the doors. On the end of the catalogue desk just inside, there is a stack of Wish Books still tied with plastic strapping. Nobody has cut the strap yet. By Christmas, there will not be one of them left in the building. This was the store most of us grew up going to. Two floors, an auto centre on the side, a catalogue desk by the door, and two names over the entrance where every other store in the country had one. We walk through it in the order you would actually have walked through it, from the catalogue desk to the pickup window at the side of the building. Craftsman tools on the pegboard. Snow tires and block heaters in the auto centre. Kenmore appliances in harvest gold and avocado green. Snowmobile suits, mitts on a string, and jeans in regular, slim and husky. Hockey sticks in a barrel, skates on the sharpening wheel, and the toy department in October, half stocked and half promise. Every price, every brand and every smell is the one that was really there that year. We are not skipping an aisle. If you remember being handed the Wish Book in October, tell us in the comments what you circled and what town it was. Somebody watching this circled the same thing on the same page. Next week: an Eaton's in 1972, floor by floor.