Woolworth's

(Published in The State, Columbia, SC 1/1/98)

I make a pilgrimage to Charleston at least twice a year. I go down to park my car and slip on my walking shoes, to eat a praline from the market, to stand in front of historic buildings and reflect on my relationship to my own complex past.

Of course, I always notice changes. Focusing on the past does that. Sometimes these changes are disturbing to my Charleston routine in the short run (this time a favorite coffee shop had gone out of business); other Charleston changes make more of a difference to me. They become "indicator" changes, and stoke my fear that the world which pleases my particular sensibilities is passing away.

Here's a sign: Woolworth's on King Street has closed after 118 years of operation. For the first time in twenty years I could not swing through the huge discount store and smell the mingled odor of popcorn and shoe leather scuffed on the white floor tile, cluck at cages of green and yellow parakeets, revel in the characters at the long luncheonette counter, and marvel at the thousands of what singer Nancy Griffith calls "useless plastic objects."

Until the most recent visit my bi-annual Woolworth's diversion from the emerging hipness of King Street (a Banana Republic for Women is now in the old Silver's 5 & 10) always reminded me of my Spartanburg childhood, where Woolworth's was a must-stop on Saturday morning visits to town, with or without the necessity for a purchase. We in Spartanburg lost our Woolworth's in the 1970s, a victim of "the malling of America," but I always believed Woolworth's would surely be preserved in Charleston at all costs, like the old slave market, or the powder magazine. Doesn't 118 years of operation makes any business "historic?"

By preservation, I don't mean simply preserving the building. I know that some hip chain like The Gap will lease the space, clean and preserve the tile floor, and save the word "Woolworth's" spelled out in red tile at the entrance way. They might even think to keep the luncheonette sign over the jean racks to give the decor a shot of nostalgia. But they will also fill the space with overpriced clothes made in Asia (The beauty of Woolworth's was that it was filled with objects made in Asia, priced just right) and the diversity of socio-economic sales traffic will drop to zero.

What I mean by preservation is that Woolworth's culture would be preserved, that the store would remain a variety store: selling and employing and serving a variety of people: Island people in for a Saturday in the city, poor people from west of the interstate, nostalgic people like me and Nancy Griffith who see Woolworth's as a bridge to the past where the foot traffic of our imagination could still cross.

Friends assure me it's Capitalism, that Woolworth's have been closing everywhere. "It's just changing markets," one friend says. "Be happy for Charleston. King's Street is becoming the shopping destination in the south. And those shoppers are not coming to shop at Woolworth's."

I am not happy for Charleston, or the shoppers. So much is disappearing, and it is the burden of writers to note it. "Oh boy!" the commuting shoppers cry when they see whatever catalogue shop opens on King Street. "Oh loss!" I respond like a character from a Thomas Wolfe novel.