![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
One more childhood dream finally gone.
Nov. 1st, 2009 07:47 pmWhen I was growing up near Boston, one of the places that my parents would make a trip to a couple times per year was SPAG'S. Spag's was a store based on no-frills merchandising, buy it cheap and sell it for a little more. His profit margins were thin, but boy did he make it up in volume. He would buy insurance salvage cargos. Not quite so fresh packaged foods. Factory cosmetic rejects and seconds. He only dealt in cash, there were no bags, and anything that sat on the shelf for very long got marked down in to move it out.
For all of my chlidhood, he expanded and expanded. He converted the back half of his store from warehouse to more retail space, and stored everything on a fleet of old unregistered tractor trailers that parked in the old parking lot behind his store. He bough the old school house behind his store and turned that into more retail space. He bought out his neighbor and made that his soda and garden store, and provided more parking that he so desperately needed.
For me, it was a wonder. I never know what we would find there, bit it was always interesting, and sometimes downright weird. Later on, when I had income and a car of my own. I would try to get out there a few times per year.
After I moved back home in the 90s, the old man had semi-retired, and his kids were managing the store. They started accepting checks and credit cards, and now they had bags at the cashier for our purchases. The energy and the merchendise were still there, but they had stopped expanding, and the energy had peaked.
A few years later, Spag died, and his widow only outlived him by a short time. The store was still coasting along, but the kids were looking for a way out. Around 2002 or so, they sold the store to another local discount merchandising chain called Building 19. Which had started out as pretty much an imitation of Spag's, but the building 19 people never got the magic right. They got the ecomonics right, as they have somthing like ten stores now. So that counts for something.
Today I happened to be out in Fitchburg for the gun show, and it was a nice day for a drive, so I toddled down to shrewsbury to visit Spag's. (Now called Spag's 19) I hadn't been out there very often since the buyout, as the adventure was fading, and there are building 19 stores a lot more conveintly located for me.
The parking lot was mostly empty, the expansion parking lots were all closed and looked like they were having construction in one of them for another store. All three of the outbuilding stores were closed and looked in various states of abandonment. The original front of the store, facing on route 9 was closed off with a trashy looking plywood barrier. The merchendise and the merchendising was identical to all the other building 19 stores. It was very disappointing.
Spag's is finally dead, and the rotting corpse is not worth a visit to even mourn it's passing.
For all of my chlidhood, he expanded and expanded. He converted the back half of his store from warehouse to more retail space, and stored everything on a fleet of old unregistered tractor trailers that parked in the old parking lot behind his store. He bough the old school house behind his store and turned that into more retail space. He bought out his neighbor and made that his soda and garden store, and provided more parking that he so desperately needed.
For me, it was a wonder. I never know what we would find there, bit it was always interesting, and sometimes downright weird. Later on, when I had income and a car of my own. I would try to get out there a few times per year.
After I moved back home in the 90s, the old man had semi-retired, and his kids were managing the store. They started accepting checks and credit cards, and now they had bags at the cashier for our purchases. The energy and the merchendise were still there, but they had stopped expanding, and the energy had peaked.
A few years later, Spag died, and his widow only outlived him by a short time. The store was still coasting along, but the kids were looking for a way out. Around 2002 or so, they sold the store to another local discount merchandising chain called Building 19. Which had started out as pretty much an imitation of Spag's, but the building 19 people never got the magic right. They got the ecomonics right, as they have somthing like ten stores now. So that counts for something.
Today I happened to be out in Fitchburg for the gun show, and it was a nice day for a drive, so I toddled down to shrewsbury to visit Spag's. (Now called Spag's 19) I hadn't been out there very often since the buyout, as the adventure was fading, and there are building 19 stores a lot more conveintly located for me.
The parking lot was mostly empty, the expansion parking lots were all closed and looked like they were having construction in one of them for another store. All three of the outbuilding stores were closed and looked in various states of abandonment. The original front of the store, facing on route 9 was closed off with a trashy looking plywood barrier. The merchendise and the merchendising was identical to all the other building 19 stores. It was very disappointing.
Spag's is finally dead, and the rotting corpse is not worth a visit to even mourn it's passing.
