2024-02-27 08:49:15
Dime stores were once in every small town. Then big box stores came along, and rural life changed forever.
MARYSVILLE — Everything must go. Just like the traditions behind it.
“It’s nothing like it used to be here,” apologized Rod Wells, the longtime manager of Springrove Variety, an old-fashioned 5&10 store, which recently announced it was closing for good. He was hustling from one aisle to another, trying to keep everything on the rapidly emptying shelves looking neat. “We’re a shell of ourself right now.”
It was the beginning of the end, the first day of the last days of one of the last traditional dime stores in Michigan. After every last doily, every stitch of fabric, each skein of yard has been bought; once even the very fixtures and shelves are sold off, Wells will lock the door for the last time and walk away.
He’s friendly and gregarious, an affable stickler for old-fashioned neatness who walks the floors all day saying hello to the regulars, or helping customers find some very particular thing, or making sure the merchandise on the shelves is lined up and stacked perfectly straight. Or, like that morning, consoling people who approach him in tears because their favorite store is going away.
“It’s been that way today,” the 63-year-old said. “I’ve had a few of our customers say they can’t come in anymore ‘cause it doesn’t look like it used to look. It’s been hard for them. But it’s OK. It’s just time to be done.”
Right behind him, standing in line, was one of them. “I’m sick regarding it,” Lynda Howard, 67, said while pushing a cart piled high with rolls of colorful yarn that she uses to make baby blankets, scarves, sweaters and hats. She waited at the old-fashioned cash register, where prices are still typed in by hand. “It’s terrible. This is our go-to place for anything. It might be hardware, some kind of household thing, some kind of child’s thing. It’s always here.”
Unlike almost all the other dime stores in the country, which obsolesced their way out of business, Springrove is still thriving. It might’ve continued. “But this was planned,” Wells said. “We’re just retiring.”
Five and dimes, as they were called, sold a wide array of household goods for cheap, as the name brags. They began in the late 1800s selling a curious jumble of clothes, toys, hardware, games, stationery, glassware and greeting cards; modeled on the big-city department stores but offering similar goods for less, closer to home. Some featured a lunch counter in the back. Many had a candy counter in the front.
Woolworth’s was the first, and it became one of the largest retail chains in the country. Second was Kresge, founded in Detroit. But the format unraveled in the 1990s at the hands of first Walmart, then dollar stores, then the internet, most of which might offer customers more for lower cost.
“The dime stores were just always part of small towns,” said Mike Sprenger, the store’s 70-year-old owner. “You had the barber shop, the soda fountain and the dime store. Pretty much, at one time, people just stayed in their towns back in the good old days. And we had everything that we supplied for the town, and whatever the town needed we would go out and get it. There used to be one in every town. And now they’re just gone.”
But not Springrove. It lasted longer largely thanks to its emphasis on crafting, and a loyal customer base of handicrfollowings that appreciated the arcane and obscure supplies that might be found here.
“I’d look everywhere else in the world, and all you had to do is go ask him and say, ‘Hey, do you think you can get this?’ and he’d say, ‘Yeah, absolutely, I’ll order that for you,’ ” Howard said. “And you can’t get it anywhere else, even over the internet.”
Springrove offered almost everything anyone needed to make just regarding anything. There was a table in the back piled feet high with rolls of patterned fabric, which people used to make their own clothes, or pillowcases, or bags. There were rolls of oilcloth to make table covers, spools of ribbons and bows to lend flair to gifts, fleece for blankets, foam for cushions, a spectrum of threads and rainbows of yarn. It was a do-it-yourself store left over from a time when many still did things themselves; back when handicrafts like knitting, crocheting, weaving, embroidery and quilt-making were common household skills, especially in rural areas.
But people don’t craft like they used to. The culture’s different. And it’s often cheaper to buy those items, usually made overseas. So the skills slowly vanished, the love of crafting faded, another heritage was lost and the crfollowings grew grayer by the year.
The rest of the store remained true to its roots all along. “We’re still a dime store, exactly like the old days,” Wells said. Where else in town might you still find cap pistols for boys and paper dolls for girls? Plastic lambs for the lawn? Model trucks and planes to paint and assemble? Hula hoops and bird seed, paint-by-numbers kits and jigsaw puzzles, pot holders and oven mitts; the store had a little bit of everything, and much of it was stuff that wasn’t sold elsewhere anymore.
And there was still an old-fashioned candy counter at the front.
“I always liked these old dime stores,” Britt Hoorstra, 42, said. He was carrying boxes of model airplanes and cars, a lifelong hobby. “They’re just everything hometown, brick and mortar, instead of these big conglomerates. They’ve got all of these neat little things. And Rod’s kind of like going to the little hardware store where you go talk to someone, where it’s a lot friendlier than these big, nameless corporations. I’ve grown accustomed to this guy. He’s like family.”
Wells spent a lifetime working in 5&10s. He began at a chain called D&C, which once had 53 stores in Michigan alone, but which now doesn’t exist. Then Bur-lers Variety, another local dime store chain that’s now down to a lone store in Warren. Then he came here, where he’s run the place for a quarter century with six employees.
The countdown to closing had begun with a clearance sale, and the store was mobbed. Most of the crowd was older, and most were women. They pushed carts full of supplies, stocking up one last time, stopping Wells to say how sad they were not just at the loss the store, but also over another familiar tradition going away.
“I’m very down in the dumps regarding this,” Marilyn Slattery, 87, said to him. She was loading up on spices. “I’ve been coming here for 30 years. There’s no dime stores like this anymore. There’s nothing like this anywhere.”
Wells bounced from aisle to aisle, arranging the boxes of jigsaw puzzles into a crisp symmetry, spreading model airplanes and cars evenly so there was no empty space between them, lining up stuffed animals so they all faced outward the same way.
“See, that’s the way our counters should look,” he said, carefully lining stuffed animals to face outward in symmetry. His phone has hundreds of photos of his straight-shelf handiwork, which he shows off proudly. “We’re usually really, really neat and clean, we’re pristine. You don’t see this very often, where there’s shelf showing, but we’re extremely busy today.”
And he dismantled the metal shelves on which nothing was left.
Springrove’s final day is the last day in March, or whatever day the last item on the last shelf is sold. The way the shelves were clearing, the store’s last day was approaching fast.
John Carlisle writes regarding Michigan. His stories can be found at freep.com/carlisle. Contact him: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @_johncarlisleFacebook at johncarlisle.freep or on Instagram at johncarlislefreep.
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