The five-and-dime store is far from how we shop now; today, we casually use delivery services like Instacart or Amazon Prime.
Also known as the “dime store” or “variety store,” they were popular in the late 19th century and remained prominent through the mid-20th century, especially in small towns.
Their popularity was due partly to an idea: offer a wide selection of items and make it convenient for shoppers to find everything on their list. Before its advent, shoppers would visit several stores to buy clothing, toys, hardware, etc. The stores would also sell the items at a discount—hence the “five-and-dime” term.
This idea not only fueled their popularity but ironically led to their general demise, as stores such as Target and Walmart scaled the idea to the even-more-of-everything-for-cheap shopping experience we’re all accustomed to today.
But believe it or not, the five-and-dime is not extinct, and one couple — Scotty and Paula Walker — recently traveled back to the five-and-dime’s heyday via a road trip to visit those few remaining stores.
Their interest in such stores is personal — they ran one, Walker’s 5 & 10, in Holden, Missouri (population 2,273). It’s a store that had pretty much been on Holden’s Second Street since 1909. (It had burned down at one point but was rebuilt months later.)
The Walkers closed the store for good in August.
“We thought … ‘We owe ourselves a vacation for working for 34 years with no time away from the store,’” said Scotty Walker. He grew up going to the TG&Y and Ben Franklin stores in nearby Independence, Missouri.
They had their sights set on a road trip to Maine and wanted to drop in and see a certain five-and-dime in Winter Harbor.
“So, we figured, ‘Well, this will be probably our last chance to see that store,’” he said. “And then, of course, on the way, I had already mapped out other five-and-dimes that I wanted to see.”
After all, mixing five-and-dime business with vacationing is nothing new for the Walkers.
“Whenever we traveled … we always checked to see if there was a variety store or five-and-dime anywhere in the area,” said Paula Walker. “And we have to go see it because when we were working, that was how we got new ideas. We exchanged ideas with the owners, talked with them, and got to know them.”
Their 15-day trip covered 4,000 miles and 11 states. “The first vacation we ever took that didn’t have a timeline,” said Scotty Walker.
In addition to Winter Harbor, they visited stores in East Aurora, Northville, New York, and Boonville, Indiana. The Walkers also visited sites of shuttered stores that have left behind visual reminders in the form of “ghost signs.” (They learned about the sites through a Facebook community dedicated to five-and-dimes.)
“Some stores were very similar to ours, and some were vastly different,” Scotty Walker said. “But at the end of the day, we all made our memory of a 5-and-10 work for each of our communities.”
For instance, Miller’s 5 & 10 in Boonville, Indiana, focused on gift items to differentiate itself from the nearby Walmart. On the other hand, Vidler’s 5 & 10 in East Aurora, New York, was more of a variety store “but like supercharged because they had four buildings all connected and two floors,” Scotty Walker said.
Back in Holden, Scotty Walker is proud of his knack for finding merchandise his customers liked. With the right merchandise mix, they made their store a destination for locals, and people from around the country and the world came to visit and shop.
“Our merchandise was unique,” he said. “But you could also come in and get your school supplies or your bottle of aspirin or a Band-Aid or a cooking spatula. But you could also find things you wouldn’t find in other places, like bulk candy sold from behind a glass case scooped out and bagged by a clerk. Plus, over 200 varieties of glass bottle soda pop.” (KCPT-TV profiled the store in 2023.)
Walker’s 5 & 10 also offered something modern home-delivery giants can’t provide: a place for a community to gather and discuss the weather or Friday night’s football game.
“I told people as we were closing out, ‘I’m not going to miss the business aspect of this, but I will miss the social aspect of the people that come in,’” he said.
Holden residents miss it because they are eager to catch up if they see the Walkers in the yard.
“Paula was gonna buy me a sign to put in the yard to say, ‘Scotty is in,’” he joked.
The couple plans to spend their well-earned retirement by taking more road trips — and finding as many fives-and-dimes as possible.
“That’s the one thing about all of us variety store people … it’s in our blood,” Scotty Walker said.
