i drove back from Sioux Falls today. upon entering minnesota, i passed a lone store in the distance. Pamida. i haven't seen a PAMIDA since i was 6 or 7. i used to spend summers with my grandma and my brother in Wyoming when i was a kid. Grandma would take us to Pamida. the name might sound weird, but Pamida pre-dates Target and K-mart.
that got me thinking about all the other defunct Grocery/Department stores that i remembered from when i was a kid. in Worland, Wyoming we had a Pamida, and we had a Ben Franklin. my Aunt Tootsie worked in the photo dept. there. Ben Franklin was less of a Target, and more of a small town craft store/hallmark/walmart. the place you'd go to find weird coloring books and old easter egg dye.
that reminded me of the greatest of all forgotten stores from yesteryear...WOOLWORTHS. a place of fear. a place of danger...
we had a Wollworths in Rochester when i was growing up. Think of a K-mart, with a fully functioning diner, pharmacy, and a full selection of comic books. it was the perfect spot to ditch your kid when you had to run errands.
One day in 1986, my mom took me with her to stop down at woolworths to fill a prescription. it was time for lunch, so we sat down at the counter (because there were no tables, just a huge diner counter). i got a hot dog and some chips and a 7-up.
i dont know where my mom went, but i remember eating halfway through my hot dog and thinking, "what would happen if i just swallowed the rest of this hot dog whole?". i was 6. i thought i was clever finding a short cut to this whole "eating" thing, and decided to give it a try. i gulped it down and it got stuck right in the middle of my throat. i managed to only half choke myself, because even though i couldn't swallow any further, i could still breathe. so the anxiety hadn't set in yet. i sat there on my swivling barstool making contorted faces trying to find some hidden swallow strength. my mom returns asking me how everything was, and i acted like nothing was wrong, afraid that she'd be pissed that i had given up on chewing and managed to lodge half a hot dog in my throat, IN PUBLIC.
i was more afraid of embarrassing my mom, than dying at that point.
she sits down next to me and starts talking to some old man next to us. at this point im starting to freak out, cause now i HAVE to swallow or my mom will find out im a retard, and there will be some paramedic scene or something, and everyone would think my mom was a horrible parent based on my ridiculous behavior.. so i grab my 7-up and start sipping it down. big mistake. as soon as i tried to swallow the soda, it made it impossible for me to breathe. i dont remember how much time passed from soda to lack of air...but i remember standing up with some panicked look on my face, my mom grabbing my arm and yelling at me, some old man staring at me, and the hot dog slipping into my stomach. i took some deep breaths. told my mom "i got a bit of food stuck in my throat", sat down and stared at my potato chips.
my mom doesn't know that i almost died from being an idiot. usually parents prepare for the evils of the world to threaten their children....not hot dogs...not dept. stores.
there's a huge gap in my memory after that. probably because food lost its appeal. it was merely chewed and swallowed. no more excitement. no more adventure. i didnt eat a hot dog for a really long time. and i didn't set foot inside Woolworths till i was a teenager, and i was positively certain i couldn't die from anything in there.
Now Woolworths is gone. looking back...how tragic, and funny would have been for me to have died in a 1986 era Woolworths, on a hot dog.
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