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Former A&P, 1530 West First Street, Winston-Salem NC.

As a very odd means of celebrating my fourth wedding anniversary, I’m finally posting the first pages of my new Winston-Salem section. This one’s important, because it’s where I live now. When it’s done — within the next week, if all goes well — it will also mark the completion of the Triad Trilogy that also features my hometown of Greensboro and nearby High Point.

Enjoy. More soon.

And yes, I know how redundant “Triad Trilogy” sounds, thanks.

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Sorry I’ve been neglecting the journal recently. Between classes starting back up and the untimely demise of my hard drive, not to mention lots of actual paying work, I’ve been a little busy. And I’ve also been trying to concentrate on both the content and design of the site, as you may have noticed.

Soon, I hope to have lots of updates to the Safeway section, and to complete the Winston-Salem section of the site. I’m also working on photo galleries for Atlanta, Chicago, and LA. If anyone wants to contribute content (or heck, even money), please let me know.

For now, I offer this quintessentially 1970s Publix store in West Palm Beach. I’m reading a company history of Publix right now, a Christmas gift from my betrothed. It makes for a nice diversion in between texts on library database design..

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Today’s feature: two amazing former Kroger stores in central North Carolina, the former here in Winston-Salem, and the latter in nearby Burlington. Both are extremely well-preserved examples of this particular prototype from the early 1950s. This is becoming one of my favorite old store designs, and may be one of my most sought-after over the next few years, now that I’m no longer living in the land of the Marina Safeway.

As an interesting side note, I’m told the Burlington store below is the one where black widow murderer Blanche Taylor Moore (portrayed by Elizabeth Montgomery in a 1993 TV movie) was employed along with one of her victims.

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Colonial Store, 514 North Cherry Street, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Open 27 October 1938. Closed 24 May 1958. Since demolished. Photo from the now-defunct Twin City Sentinel.

Originally a Big Star, this 12,000 square foot store was widely regarded as Winston-Salem’s first self-service supermarket. It came shortly after the opening of the David Pender Grocery Company’s first Big Star supermarket in downtown Greensboro, thirty miles east.

What does this all mean? Only that I’m well into my research on the upcoming Winston-Salem section of this site. Comments and submissions welcome.