Roger wilco store tv#

Gone forever are Villa Roma, Arthur’s Toy Town, Happy Steak (I still have a cardboard employees hat somewhere in my garage, filched from a high school friend’s summer job), and Henry’s Burgers. Sometimes they reappear across town, in the more bustling centers – Radio Shack, Red Boy, and most recently, Tagliafferi’s Deli have made the move successfully. Slowly, the other tenants are disappearing. There is talk of the entire center being “rezoned,” to make way for plentiful, possibly low income, housing. The market, having gone through multiple owners - Cala Foods, Bell Market, and DeLano's - has been vacant for several years now. Today, all that remains of the original tenants are the liquor store and the Pay-n-Save, now a CVS Pharmacy, and yes, there is still another CVS less than a mile away. No longer “Novak’s Square” or “Tresch Triangle,” they became simply “The Square,” and “The Triangle.” Adolescent troublemakers hanging out in the lot became known as the “Square Rats.” The Pay-n-Save became Bill's Drugs, then Longs Drugs, even though there was already another Longs within walking distance.

The founding fathers’ names were the first to go. San Marin Plaza was built, with its upscale Petrini’s Market, now Harvest. It seems that there was an unwritten rule that one should not have to travel more than a mile to find a shopping center. My friends and I would often get thrown out after pestering the managers endlessly and programming obscene messages to flash on the TRS-80 Personal Computers' screens. As a teenager, I spent many afterschool afternoons loitering in the Radio Shack and the toy store. I remember riding my bicycle to the Square on hot summer days to spend my allowance on candy or ice cream. Over the years, an entire shopping center popped up: Radio Shack, Red Boy Pizza, Arthur’s Toy Town, Happy Steak, a liquor store, an ice cream parlor, a health food store. Over the next 20 years, Novak’s Square grew into a cornucopia of necessary shops and services, and served as my family’s base of material consumption.įirst came the the Pay-n-Save, next door. I remember her, and later myself, writing checks to “CASH” at the check stands in those ancient days before ATMs.

Roger wilco store tv#

I remember my mother with her paper bag of tubes carefully removed from our dark TV set.

As a child, I also remember the fascinating vacuum tube testing apparatus that sat inside the front doors. There was always a Post Office kiosk inside the entrance. Kids would play on its rope swing while their mothers were inside shopping. I’ve read that at one time, the parking lot was dirt, with an old oak tree at its center. As a teenager, I remember my surprise when out-of-town friends would make fun of the quaintly-named market.

It was one of a handful of grocery stores in the entire town of Novato.

In the 1960’s, our hometown grocery store stood alone in the middle of its vast asphalt parking lot. In the beginning, there was only Roger Wilco.