New York really doesn’t count for much, outside of New York. Certainly not as much as they think they do.

A Sears catalog sales distribution building was near the stadiums. It is a Starbucks office now. Adjacent to it was the Milwaukee Road’s Stacy Street Yard now a BNSF intermodal facility.

With my first allowance, I remember going to both stores and shopping so very carefully for the Right Ballpoint Pen. I settled on a Papermate, slightly upscale but it had a nice feel in my hand and I was worth it.

Probably most people know him as Hagrid from the “Harry Potter” movies. But it was his role on the British show, “Cracker,” about a brilliant criminal psychologist whose personal life was a complete addictive mess, that put Coltrane on my map.

There was no one like him. His appearances were always a treat, no matter what he was in.

It isn’t even mentioned in this video, but the giant among all of these is Sears, and their sad demise is painful to watch – essentially now a real estate / property liquidation company. That’s an original, heavily-muscled appendage propping up a corner of American culture, now withering up and dropping off as dust. What a shame .

Then there was Lechmere Sales on the east coast. You filled out an order slip from the thick catalog in the lobby, gave it to the clerk and paid up, and then your box would come rolling down the conveyor at the other side of the lobby, for pickup. No money spent on showrooms!

Finally: Who among us has been to Spag’s? Once you went to Spag’s, shopping anywhere else was never as much excitement and fun.