Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

I am pretty much convinced that this is a picture of the Publix supermarket at 1313 South Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa, Florida. Unfortunately, the "GRA" portion of the "grand opening" banner is obscuring the address that was painted on the glass over the front door. But if it's not that exact Publix, it's an incredible simulation, right down to the layout of the parking lot.

This is important because that Publix was the supermarket I went to with my mother all the time in my youth, where I bought all my Archie digests and got free cookies at the bakery. It was also the first place I saw a cash register equipped with a UPC scanner (Publix was one of the first supermarket chains to have those in all their stores).

Unfortunately, this picture isn't in color, or you'd see that most of the front of the store was white, except the portion under the "Publix" name and logo, which was gray crushed stone, a concept that was really big at the time this store was built. Oh, and the lettering was green. The Publix logo was (still is) two shades of green. The female employees wore ugly green outfits, and the male employees wore white shirts and ties, until the mid-to-late 1980s, when they switched to polo shirts in various tropical colors. (Publix also gave out S&H Green Stamps until the mid-to-late 1980s. They liked the color green.)

Anyway, in the mid-1990s, assuming this really is the store I think it is, it was torn down and replaced with a new, larger store on the same lot, 90 degrees to the left (the photographer is basically standing right in front of the location of the new store). As for the old store, well, "you're parking on my memories," a phrase coined by Charles Schulz.

We moved to a different neighborhood in 1986, but that Publix was still the most convenient supermarket...until a brand-new Kash n' Karry opened much closer. And now that I don't live there anymore, there's now a Publix in that neighborhood, too.