I live in a generation that has gone through amazing change. I was born in 1948. In 1948 in Sacramento some wise business person came up with a new place called Town and Country Village. It was one of the first open air malls in the United States. Imagine a place where there was more than one store; it was convenient to go to one place and get so many different things.
My siblings and I had a neighbor that worked for the Sacramento Union newspaper (remember newspapers? They were written words on paper delivered to our homes!).
For a couple of years in the early 50's, my brother and sister and I were put into clothes that weren't ours and had our pictures taken for marketing of the mall in the newspaper. We were identified as the Lyman kids. I still have some yellowed newspaper with the little ones 'having fun' for the camera.
The era was the start of moving from the Sears and Roebuck catalog that my grandparents used to order everything - including houses! Sometimes it was the Sear's night around the kitchen table as Christmas was planned along with the start of the school year.
Then as we grew up there were stores everywhere and super malls started to appear. You could go to one mall and have hundreds of shops. It was a day out filled with entertainment (6 movie screens in one place!), food (13 restaurants), and retail shops of all kinds.
I had heard the ultimate was in Minnesota and was called the Mall of the Americas. Finally at one point we went to Minnesota for a family reunion. We planned the trip with a night arriving and a night leaving at a hotel in the Mall itself. We checked in and got prepared. We walked to the hotel lobby and to the special mall entrance at one side of the hotel. There before us was the entire world. It had three levels and thousands of stores. In the center was an amusement park with a roller coaster.
I am a child at heart. During my last visit to the Mall of the Americas with my wife, I found the Sponge Bob Square Pant's exhibit. As i sit here in front of my computer, I look to the right of the monitor and on the wall is a picture of me with Sponge Bob Square Pants. There is a smile on my face - it is priceless.
Then came the next phase. CoVid hit the world and suddenly it wasn't safe to gather together in crowds in one place. The circle closed.
Suddenly because of the pandemic and our ability to have the world at our fingertips on the computer, we could get anything we wanted. Suddenly Amazon became the new Sears Roebuck. The shipping companies rushed to make sure we got our orders in a timely way. Now the world is filled with vans, with trucks, with private cars delivering everything and anything at a moment's notice. Suddenly we have the term 'porch pirates.'
Our generation that started the process around the kitchen table is again at that table. But now we can order food from most restaurants, grocers, prepared meals, and all the retail goods available. They can all be delivered quickly and efficiently.
There are many ways to determine we are getting the best price. Yet is seems a bit surreal. I absolutly love it. I have little mobility and the new system makes my life so easy. I guess my biggest question around the whole system is about the following. What do we do with all the darn shipping boxes now filling our garages! Maybe that is the next big industry.
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