Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, April 18, 2005.

When I was five years-old, my family moved from Pennsylvania to South Carolina. Five is a pretty good age to make a move like that, I think. It's always tough to leave friends and familiar surroundings, but everything is an adventure at that age. New is good. New is interesting. But it also makes the old a little bit... magical.

Every summer we'd make a pilgrimage back to Pennsylvania to visit relatives and to experience things that you just couldn't experience in South Carolina, which in the early 1970s was a significant list. There was the food (Tasty-Cakes, birch beer, Lebanon baloney), the sites (row homes, big and old Catholic churches, playgrounds with enormous metal slides and swings), the sounds (diesel trucks rolling past my Grandmother's house, Pennsylvania Dutch accents -- "chunny, get outta m'road" --, Kimba the White Lion on *cable* television!) But one of the biggest things was going shopping at a local department store called Boscov's, specifically the toy department.

Boscov's had a display case with toy cars called Corgi's. The Corgi's were big and metal and shiny and heavy. They almost required two hands to hold. Lord, they were beautiful. But they were also expensive ($10!) and were clearly meant for a higher caste than mine. But on top of this display case was a glass cube that rotated to show the current model year of Matchbox cars. Each slot had a car and a number. You'd tell the lady which number you wanted and she would reach back to the wall behind the counter and pick a corresponding Matchbox -- literally! Those wonderful little vehicles, with their real metal bodies, bakelite wheels, and "Made in England by Lesney" stamped on the bottoms, came in matchboxes. Lift the cardboard flap and roll out the car. And for only a dollar! Oh, rapture!

Sigh... This bit of nostalgia was brought on by the recent decision of the last family-owned department store, Roger's, to call it quits. We didn't shop at Roger's often (no toy department), but I certainly liked the idea of it: something you could experience only here and not at the all the other Wal-Marts at all the other exits off the pike. But a new mall and all its nearby regional and national chains finally did suck all the dollars out of Roger's and that is that.

So I'll miss Roger Raccoon, the Roger's mascot, and I know a lot of other people will, too. But I hope not too many. Because it'd be kind of sickening to find Roger Raccoon plush toys in the nostalgia bins of Cracker Barrel restaurants nation-wide.