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Someone pumped your gas and cleaned your windshield. No self service. And you got Green Stamps you could redeem for all kinds of stuff. Sometimes you free stuff right at the pump like drinking glasses or steak knives.
I shopped at Kmart the first time in 1971 and Walmart for the first time in 1993.
The first time I shopped at Kmart my best friend's family took me with them to do some back to school shopping. It was a 50 mile drive there and was quite an experience for me. Not only was it the first time I was in a store that big, but it was the first time I was in a shopping mall. Even though it wasn't much of a mall. Just a short enclosed mall with a half dozen small shops leading to the one and only anchor store Kmart. But still my first experience to that concept.
I remember my mother was really happy with the prices on the clothes I bought. After that she wanted to go there too. Before that all my shopping was done at the local Main Street clothing stores. Which did not have great prices, and not much of a selection either. You pretty much had to take whatever they had in the store. Nothing really to choose from.
The last time I was in a Kmart sometime in the early 2000s, I remember that not much had changed with Kmart since the first time I shopped there. The store was quite a bit bigger, but still looked almost exactly the same as the first time I was in Kmart. The store design was still the same with miles and miles of cheap pegboard shelves and racks. It just didn't seem as impressive as the first time I was there.
I remember the "gas wars" back in the 50's and 60's. My parents' mom and pop store sold bread, milk, and other food items, but our biggest income came from selling gasoline, that Dad pumped into cars. Frequently, he would send me, on foot, down the road to write notes of prices our competitors were selling their gas for. When I took my notes back, immeditely, out came the large plywood signs with a slash across the gasoline price, and the lowered price per gallon.
ETA: Remember those old machines at the supermarket where you could pull all the tubes out of your TV, test them at the supermarket, and buy replacements for any that were failing?
I'm so old I can remember when mom would send one of us kids to the neighbors to borrow an egg, a cup of flour, or a cup of milk, a stick of butter. Whatever was needed to finish some baking project.
Or one of the neighbors kids would knock and ask for something.
Also, a mom would show up and ask my mom to watch her kids.
ETA: Remember those old machines at the supermarket where you could pull all the tubes out of your TV, test them at the supermarket, and buy replacements for any that were failing?
Kmart had those tube testing machines in the late 1970s. Before that we would call up a TV repair shop and have them come and change out the tube.
That's an interesting video but they sure did mix up a lot of time periods there, everything from the 1940s to the 1980s. I could be wrong but I don't think TV reached popularity in 1948. Since in 1948 most of the country didn't even have any TV stations and in the few cities that did have them, not a lot of people would have owned TV sets at that time.
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