In Gardner, you remember

As many of you know, I was born in Gardner, a city of about 20,000 people in north central Massachusetts. Once a major manufacturer of furniture, its nickname is the Chair City. (Here is an overview of the city's furniture history.) When I was in college, I wrote a column titled Chair City Journal and gave my senior honors thesis the same name. I worked for a short time in a furniture factory. I still have a scar on the back of my leg from the time when I walked off the edge of a loading platform.

Many of the furniture factories are closed now, the businesses moving to the American south in the 60s and 70s. Half of the stores in downtown are empty. The list of departed businesses is long - Goodnow-Pearson's department store (where you could preview 45s in a listening booth) , Robillard's pharmacy, Newberry's, the Orpheum theater, a Rexall drug store, the A&P grocery store.

In the 60s or early 70s, a strip mall opened on the south side of town. One of the anchors was Rich's, a discount department store. The chain went under and the Gardner store closed in 1997. Yesterday's Gardner News carried this front-page, above-the-fold picture.