With a Colonial grocery store within
spitting distance, any one of my siblings or I could be sent on the
errand for a loaf of bread or five pound bag of flour. Since we would
be given the exact amount of money, including tax, and the
approximate time involved to run the errand closely monitored – to
make sure that we didn't, you know, “dawdle,” we tended not to
embrace this assignment.
Frontage of Stewart and Lakewood Shopping Center
We approached the mall from the west
side on Fleet Street, a short access road that began at Perkerson
Road and t-boned and dead-ended at Brewer Boulevard, the main
thoroughfare that gracefully wove through our area and neighborhood
of Sylvan Hills.
Fleet Street also ran on the east side
of Perkerson Elementary, my grammar school, and the muddy hill full
of scrub pines and other unsightly vegetation banked up to the corner
edge of the property and ran the length of the baseball field on the
playground. A tall, chain linked fence boarded that edge, surrounded
the perimeter of the school yard, and kept children contained during
recess. It also prevented the seventh graders from ducking from the
teacher's sight and strolling over to the mall.
When asked of what he
remembers about Stewart and Lakewood, my brother Hunter wrote this:
Before
the shopping center expansion, the land was just undeveloped scrub
forest. There might have been one or two ramshackle houses on
the property, but if so I don't remember them. I seem to
remember that Fleet Street
was not complete, but just dead ended half way down, with a dirt
track heading east over to Stewart behind the original strip mall.
The expanded mall, set in a
cross shape and completed in early 1960, had two corridors of about twenty stores on each side
facing one another across a green space and allowed for four main
points of entry.
Some of the bigger stores
like JC Penny, Colonial, and
Woolworth's, where Hunter cruised the aisles checking out the 45s,
had both a front and back entrance. The back entrance at Woolworth's
had a single door opening on the side of the mall's east entrance.
This accommodated those shoppers who wish to park near an entrance,
run in a particular store, and not have to walk past other stores to
get to it. The idea must have been to streamline the shopping
experience.
Covered walkways, opened to the center
of the mall, ran the length of the mall and perpendicular to the
fronts of each store. Several covered walkway, like breeze ways,
crisscrossed to stores opposite and provided shelter to the shoppers during inclement weather: the sound
of pounding rain on the aluminum roofs is a distant but distinctive
memory.
Thick, steel poles held up these roofs
and made “cool” leaning spots for the itinerant teenager. On numerous
occasions I wrapped my hand around one of those poles, leaned as
close to the ground as I could, and then circled the pole till I was
dizzy for entertainment. The smell of those poles lingered on my
hands.
Giving the mall a park like feel were
the many shrubs and trees that had been planted down its center. A
lot of the time the grass grew high and unkempt and the trees topped
the roof line. Poured, concrete squares gave the middle area plenty
of gathering space.
On the left, JC Penny, and the right, Lerner Shops, draped either side of the west entrance or “our entrance.” {I had a part time job as a sales clerk at Lerner's when I was fifteen – the age when you could first work legally as a minor – }.
Lerner Shops, a budget store for
women's apparel and accessories, boasted large, plate glass windows
with dressed mannequins featuring the trendy clothes of the time.
Longing for the money to buy “ready made,” I walked that side
entrance many times and looked covetously at their displays.
On the east entrance was Woolworth's and Lee's Men Shop. The south entrance boasted Colonial and a jewelry store – {Friedman's or Thomas --- could have been one then the other}. I bought several silver charms for my bracelet [most notably a small boot with an “S” on it for being a member of my high school's drill team] from there.
Picked out by my sister Margaret, my
daddy purchased a mother's ring from Thomas Jeweler, a popular piece of jewelry at the
time. By the number of stones in the setting, in my mother's case
four, the wearer showed the birth months of her children – we were garnet, diamond, emerald, and ruby.
[The
ring is now in my possession and worn in remembrance of her.]
Other stores at
Stewart and Lakewood were Butler's Shoes, W.T. Grant's, Western Auto
[where Daddy worked at one time], Federal Bake Shop, Rhode's
Furniture, a shoe repair, Atlanta Federal Savings and Loan, Huddle
House, Jacob's Pharmacy, Dipper Dan Ice Cream, and The Cricket Shop,
which carried the designer Villager line. At one point, Stewart and Lakewood added
a Kroger.
We shopped that
Kroger when I was in high school, and they eliminated the need of bag
boys to take out the groceries by giving out a “buggy number” so
that Daddy could drive up and get in line to pick up our groceries,
as the number of the buggy was written on a type of claim's check.
The mall also had
their own fabric store that I despised shopping in since the strong
dye from the textiles, probably polyester – LOL, made my eyes
water. Unfortunately, we frequented it for patterns and material to
send to my aunts in Virginia, who graciously and beautifully sewed
clothing for my mother, sister, and me.
At Christmas,
Stewart-Lakewood had a singular sight and famous in Atlanta, and
people drove from other areas of the city to see it. The merchants
decorated the center of the mall with a gigantic Santa Claus that
towered over the one story retail stores and boosted Christmas sales.
As a child, that
“thing” was huge and easily seen from all sides of the mall –
but it reality, probably only twenty to thirty feet tall.
The red capped
head, blue eyes, over rouged cheeks, his right hand raised in a wave
[at one time, I think it actually moved], and white bearded face
lorded over the mall.
BTW: That big
Santa had a funky, pungent smell – mold and mildew? Reindeer
refuse?
During Boy Scout
Jamborees, the local troops built small towers in the center of the
mall and did demonstrations of climbing as well as other aspects of
merit badges. I just remember my brother Kenneth having to stay at
the shopping center all day on a Saturday for the Jamboree, and we
had to do his chores.
See, I remember
the important stuff.
In 1963,
Perkerson's area Brownie and Girl Scouts troops had an event in the center of
the mall that drew a crowd, eh, mostly parents. As a seventh grader, my
sister and her fellow Girl Scouts wore green shorts and white shirts
and danced to the “Peppermint Twist.” Totally jealous of that,
I'm sure, we fourth graders and the lesser rank, a Brownie,
performed some kind of lame skit that told a story. I had a starring role, of course,
as I dressed in a long, white gown, and at the end of the event lay
prostrate on the platform – in a totally convincing imitation of
death.
Margaret gets ready to "twist."
"Come on baby, let's do the twist."
I sit on the side waiting for my cue.
I'm sure here I do or say something fabulous ...
and then I truly show my acting chops.
One story we all
remember is the time that Hunter had an encounter with security at JC
Penny when they accused him of stealing a pair of socks. The store
manager called home and talked to mother who assured them that she
had sent him there to return them. Her recalling of the color of the
socks [maroon] convinced them he wasn't lying. We rallied around
Hunter and were positively miffed that he had to
suffer the humiliation of such an accusation.
Lawd. Socks. It
was an innocent time.
My best friend
Marcie and I rode her bike or walked to Stewart and Lakewood when we were allowed.
We hit up Jacob's Pharmacy and split [two straws] a cherry Coke, the
fountain kind with the turbo, carbonated water, syrup, and the actual
cherry in the bottom of the Coke glass. If we had an extra twenty
cents, which wasn't often, we headed to Federal Bakery for a
chocolate éclair, stuffed with real whipped cream, a decadent treat
that brought me much joy. That yeasty smell and sugary deliciousness
forever embedded in my childhood bank of memories along with the tinkle the
bell made as we opened the door.
One afternoon as
Marcie and I were returning from Stewart and Lakewood and on Fleet Street, a man
flashed us from his car. So close, yet so far from home, and
frightened as well as puzzled by such an act, we sprinted up the
steep street, made a left on Brewer, and fled to Oana and the
confines of Marcie's house. There we breathlessly promised each other
to tell no one of what had occurred – we knew it was bad, and we
didn't want our parents to keep us from our treks to S&L. From
then on, when
visiting the mall and headed home, we, spooked like race horses at the sight of a snake, always ran up Fleet
Street. The experience made an indelible ugly mark on our
excursions for Cokes and éclairs. When we were adults, Margaret told
me of a similar incident she had there.
By the time my
parents left Atlanta's south side in 1978, they had abandoned most of
their shopping at S&L except for groceries, the shoe repair, or
the National Bank of Atlanta which was later located in a stand alone building in the parking
lot of Stewart and Lakewood next to the public library.
Built at the fall
of 1965 and less than five miles west on Route 166/Lakewood Freeway
[now named Langford Parkway] the air conditioned comforts and heated
air of Greenbriar, Atlanta's third closed mall, took the shopping
away from Stewart and Lakewood.
When we became
teenagers and more mobile, the attraction of its upscale stores like
Rich's, Thom McAnn Shoes, and the Five, Seven, and Nine Shop had us speeding down Greenbriar Parkway/or the
Lakewood Freeway to the environs of a “real” mall. In our eyes, Stewart and Lakewood became "no where."
I got into some
serious trouble at Greenbriar one time, but who's interested in that?
Thanks
to the following for pictures and information for this blog entry:
