While I’m working on the 30/30 Poetry Project through Tupelo Press this month, I am not doing any work on the genealogy project!
But I found something yesterday that I wanted to share.
About 2 1/2 years ago, I mentioned that my father, and later my husband and I, owned Stanwoods Luggage and Leather in Kalamazoo.
These photos are from the 60s and 70s.
In that first post, I included this photo. There was a bell hanging from the front door so we could hear it open and close if we were in the back.
You see Why Shoe Works next door? Dad was the last owner of that business.
Every July the Downtown Kalamazoo Association would organize a sidewalk sale that most merchants would participate in. We always did, marking down items and putting them out in the heat for customers to pick over.
Here’s a photo of the sidewalk sale. I used to love working those for the excitement. Dad would stand out in front with a megaphone, addressing people across the wide main street. Our routine was broken, I was out of the confining store, and I could people watch as they rummaged through our merchandise.
Notice the round suitcases on the luggage display rack. Do you know what those are? Hatboxes!! We were still selling those in the 60s. Train cases, too. Those were boxlike suitcases where all your cosmetics and toiletries could stand upright. Today we use BAGGIES to carry our liquids. Yes, we’re definitely more civilized today.
Eventually we had T-shirts made with a new Stanwoods logo and wore the T-shirts on sidewalk days. That’s what I found yesterday! The last Stanwoods T-shirt.
Here’s a photo of the block of E. Michigan Avenue where Stanwoods existed.
The Family Kalamazoo 
How precious, Luanne – your find, your memory, your photos. Shopping in Kalamazoo was a Big Deal for us because our normal annual school clothes shopping trip was to Battle Creek. I loved sidewalk sale days in Marshall! Now I wonder if we ever passed your shops, and as you kniw Michigan Ave runs right through all three towns.
Those 60s color photos are starting to look almost as vintage as black and whites, but we remember these things as if they happened yesterday.
Do you ever use Picmonkey? There is an effect called something like yester-color that makes photos look like those old pix. That nasty yellow cast, for instance. haha I bet you did go past our store!!!
I have seen that effect somewhere when I was messing with photo apps. I’m going to try some black & whites with my new camera.
I like the thingie on my camera where I can take black and white and anything red shows up as red :).
I have to find that! I don’t know what all the buttons do … Yet!!
Beautiful pix!
I’ve never been to Kalamazoo, but those photos capture what our town looked like in those days. How wonderful that you have the memorabilia!
How big was your town, Amy?
Were you and your husband still there in the mid-90s?
We left in 1990. It seems like yesterday!
I really liked this post. It brought back memories of our downtown when I was growing up. I miss those old days when downtown was the center of activities.
It was wonderful, wasn’t it?! No other attempts at “centering” shopping or activities seems to have the same authentic feel to it as the downtown did.
This post brings back wonderful memories of sidewalks sales in the small towns near where I grew up. My family seldom went to town–but we always went on sidewalk days because everyone else had also gone to town. It was a great time both do a little shopping, and to visit with neighbors and friends.
I remember those train cases. I got a bright orange set of luggage when I graduated from high school–and one of the pieces was a train case. .
Wonderful piece – I could smell the leather and see hatboxes from my childhood.
Such good memories of days long gone. Nothing equal today.
Unfortunately, I think that is probably true.