Vintage Pyrex Coffe Mugs (or, further proof I was born 3 decades too late!)

Now, I'm sure you are asking yourself what does vintage Pyrex mugs have to do with being born too late. Lemme share with you this picture:



This is one of several Pyrex mugs that I own that have this logo on it. I own tons of Pyrex mugs, but this is the one I used today. The logo is from the Bradford House and until I googled this morning, I had no idea what the Bradford House was. I mean, I assumed it was some sort of restaurant, I just didn't know where it was. Google had a couple of links and I soon realized that Bradford House restaurants were the name of the lunch counters inside the old Grant stores. I'd never heard of Grant stores either, but from what I can gather they were either Five & Dimes or Department stores. Some of the links I found would say one thing, some the other. I guess maybe it depended on the location of the store as to whether it was a Five & Dime or a Dept. Store.

Anyhow, so as I'm sitting here at my desk, sipping my coffee from my fabulous little mug and researching Grant stores, I started remembering the old Kress store we had in my hometown while I was a small child. Now, this was early to mid 80s, and even then it felt like that store was older than dirt!! But I loved going there with my Momma. She had worked at Kress for a while before she and my Daddy got married. I remember her taking us "downtown", usually with my Grandma and we'd go to Kress. They still had a lunch counter back then and I remember eating there a couple of times. I have been craving their Grilled Cheese Sandwich all.morning! Even now, 20+ years later, I can still remember how delicious their food was.

Once, I guess I was about 15 or so, my family went to Daytona Beach for Thanksgiving. My Daddy is all into classic cars and Daytona has a huge show every Thanksgiving called the Turkey Rod Run. Anyhow, we were down there for the weekend and my sister and our friend were walking around and we found a Woolworth's. That store still had it's lunch counter too! I loved shopping there that weekend.

I'm not sure what happened to Kress, but it probably disappeared like all of the other stores of its kind. Now, mega marts and shopping malls that have hundreds of stores that will take hours to walk through have taken over. I really wish we still had stores like Kress & Woolworth's. I know I'd much rather shop at a place like that than having to deal with eleven billion people at a crowded Wal-Mart. See, I really should've been born several decades ago!

Anyway, aside from reminiscing about the past this morning I have been sort of productive. I cleared out some of the junk in our dining room. Most of it belongs to my husband and he'll be going through that tomorrow when he gets home. I found my huge box of vintage souvenir plates that I have yet to hang on the wall and sorted through those and tried to decide in which order I wanted them on the walls. It's a huge wall so I have more options than in my old houses. They're in stacks on top of my buffet because I cannot reach the wall to hang them. That's another project for my husband this week!

The weather is still humid and cloudy and I'm going to forgo shopping at the thrift stores today. I'm just going to stay here and try to get my house a little more organized because I am starting to get tired of living with such chaos. I mean we've been living here for two and a half months already and it still isn't presentable. It is driving me crazy- it's never taken us this long to get settled. So, that's what I'm going to work on today- right after I take a little nap! Hope y'all are having a great day too!