In the town where I grew up there used to be a large K-Mart-style store, called Murphy’s Mart. It was quite a place in its era, at the forefront of the super-center concept where a person could theoretically purchase underwear, a club sandwich, an oil change, and bullets. Along with millions of other improbable combinations…
And when I was a youngling my friends and I used that place like our own personal giant and incredibly cool playground.
I don’t know how we got away with all the stuff we did, but can’t recall being hassled too much by the employees. We ran free inside Murphy’s for years and, with only a few exceptions, were left to our own devices.
And what were they thinking?!
I do remember getting an earful when we were playing hide & seek one day. Some kid went rampaging around a corner and knocked an “expensive” vase off a shelf. It shattered loudly, and shards of glass went flying in every direction. It looked cool as hell, like a fireworks display. But the assistant manager (or whatever) didn’t share our enthusiasm, and we were told to “git.”
Also, my friend Mike and I set off a firecracker in the men’s room one afternoon, and they weren’t overly amused by that episode either.
There was a man in the corner boof, taking a crap. He had the place all funked-up, and was humming and rattling a newspaper, like he was in the comfort of his own home. Mike and I had our pockets full of fireworks, and one of us came up with a fine idea…
A firecracker was placed on the sink, with the fuse hanging over the edge, then lit with a butane lighter. We took off, walking briskly toward the exit on the other side of the garden center, but didn’t make it very far.
The explosion was impossibly loud. It sounded like a stick of dynamite had gone off, like the entire front of the store must now be missing. Holy shit!
The guy inside the crapatorium started howling like he’d been stabbed, and there was pandemonium everywhere. Customers were taking cover behind displays, and I think one old dude had his WWII training kick-in, and completely hit the deck.
As soon as we passed through the doors, security grabbed us. They shoved us around, and man-handled us into the bowels of the operation. One of them had me by the top of my right arm, and kept “accidentally” ramming me into walls and doors.
They wanted our names, and telephone numbers. I went first, and told them the truth. But Mike believed he could outsmart the men, and gave them fake information. And I can’t remember the exact name he used, but it was something ridiculous, like “Snappy McGee.”
Yeah, that didn’t work in our favor. Those dudes weren’t in the mood for fun ‘n’ games, and I think they made a bigger deal about it because of Mike’s pen name. Both of us experienced substantial parental heat later in the day.
Besides detonating explosives in Murphy’s, we also liked to occasionally wind-up all the alarm clocks, and set them to go off at roughly the same time. Good fun. The workers would always come running, and we thought that was an absolute riot.
And in the electronics department was a demonstration tape, on a chain, which could be shoved into any of the tape players on display. We’d crank the volume on one of the stereos as high as it would go, ram in the tape, and start that brisk walking again.
Then this would be heard within a full half-mile radius: KRACO! EIGHT-TRACK STEREO!! BWOW WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!! That would be followed by sirens, helicopter sounds, machine guns, a guitar solo, etc. etc.
And we’d be over in the book department, buckled-over at the waist, laughing a wide streak in our shorts.
A kid named Danny removed a fire extinguisher from a pole one day, and sprayed some woman in the side of the face with it. But we didn’t usually hang out with him, and most of us agreed he’d taken things too far. I mean, seriously. That kind of stuff could get us banned for life. Then where would we be?
He also shoved over a rack of winter coats once. Again: too much. It felt like we had an unwritten agreement with the staff, and Danny wasn’t interested in holding up our end of the bargain.
Of course, all of us flirted with the limits, on occasion. I remember being with Steve one night, bursting large rubber balls in the toy department with hammers. We’d scrape the claw side of it across the surface, which would cause a loud squalling sound, then: WHOOSH! For some reason we thought that was the absolute pinnacle of comedy.
And we’d occasionally change the prices on albums, something that was possible during that pre-computer era. Once I bought a copy of Exile on Main St. (a double album) for $2.99, using the price tag off a bottle of shampoo, or something.
There was a large effeminate man who managed the record department at Murphy’s, and he actually caught Rocky and me changing prices one day. We tore out of there, and didn’t stop running until we were practically in the next town. We were running like the hounds of hell were on our heels.
Yeah, like that poofter would’ve chased us… I can see him now, sprinting across the parking lot with his wrists pressed high against his chest.
In any case, we had to lay-low for a while, after our encounter with “the dancing bear.” Heh. That dude liked to pretend he was a music expert, but stocked Elvis Costello in the humor section, and the Lords of the New Church in gospel.
But of all the shenanigans we pulled in that place, my favorite was the tennis balls. We’d go into the sporting goods department, and hurl tennis balls, or handballs (who in 1970s West Virginia played handball??), in random directions.
In the rear of the store was a snack bar, or diner, or whatever you want to call it. And we’d often fling balls into it, from a great distance.
After a while we began sending a scout, to see what actually happened when the projectile returned to Earth. One time I was the watcher, and Mike was the thrower. And an old man was sitting there with a BLT and fries in front of him, and the ball landed right in the middle of his lunch.
Food jumped three feet in the air, and the old guy almost went over backwards in his chair. And I’m not joking, I thought someone might have to call 911 for me. My lungs nearly collapsed from laughter. It doesn’t seem quite so funny now (wotta grand gang of assholes we were!), but it sure did then…
So, there you go. Those are my main memories of the late, great Murphy’s Mart. Did you guys ever pull similar stunts inside a local store growing up? If so, we need to hear about ’em. Use the comments link below.
And I’ll be back on Monday, if not sooner.
See ya then.
Late(r) night update?
Hmm… to read the thread or post a “first” comment… tough decisions….
Tree
Scranton had its own Proto-Mega store once upon a time. You’ve even mentioned visiting its now soul-sucking shell Jeff.
Sugarmans was the name, and it was about the only reason many people ever drove from Scranton to Eynon. In its heyday it was a supermarket, drug store, hardware store, and general merchandise store.Plus they were cool, the had the snack bar in the front! so all the younglings could squeal at their parents at the sight of slush puppies and roller dogs. I remember as a youngling getting any number of winter coats and snow boots there . As I got a little older, I remember great racks of 8 tracks behind glass doors. The doors had slightly-smaller-than-8-track holes cut in them and were set back a bit from the shelf so you reach in and pick out a tape, look at it, even flip it over, but you had to summon the almighty clerk to unlock the cabinet for you if you actually wanted to purchase it. Or you could just have one of your sister’s friends stuff just about any unlocked, unglassed-over LP wanted into an oversized purse, and no one really seemed the wiser.
One of the last things I ever remember buying there were my first set of skis and boots! The place was starting to look more than a little careworn and cobwebby in the corners then, but they were the place to go if you wanted to hit the slopes without having a trust fund, or selling a kidney.
Now it has devolved into an indoor flea market, smelling of cabbage, and old junk and toothless unwashed vendors.
Nah – Jeff. Had I been that much of a jerk my old man would have taught me better at the buckle end of his belt.
in 97 when my cousin graduated high school the whole family to eat at outbacks….there was a jumbo sports in the same complex and the wait was and hour or so…. it wasnt long before all the men wandered over and we were in the street hockey aisle with full pads on… even my dad got involved…. everything was goin fine until my dad body checked me into the batting gloves rack and we were quickly thrown from the store… what i remember most though was my dad telling the manager things like this would never happen if the batting gloves hadn’t been so close to the hockey equipment…..
“And we’d be over in the book department, buckled-over at the waist, laughing a wide streak in our shorts.”
Fantastic.
“Yeah, like that poofter would’ve chased us… I can see him now, sprinting across the parking lot with his wrists pressed high against his chest.”
Also very good.
We were at a grocery store one time, it was an HEB in Central Texas. My brother and I ran wild because my mother (who is rather petite) couldn’t keep us from acting like maniacs. So my brother went running up an isle, dragging shit down as he went, and laughing like a kook. Suddenly this rather large old lady grabbed him by the arm and started whooping his ass. A complete stranger. He was stunned, so was I. She even gave him the “who how what” speech while pointing into his crying face. My mother thought nothing of it. She acted like it was perfectly normal to have a total stranger spank her child and then give him a good talking to.
I think we must have been real shit heads back then.
Just holding my spot. #7
You guys were crazy!! No way could I ever get away with stuff like that
We had a Woolworth’s, but it was not nearly as much fun as Murphy’s.
I think I’m still banned from the Wal-Mart in Winston-Salem for riding the bikes from the toy department around the store… when the manager saw us we ditched ’em under a giant rack of jeans and ran… if we had stayed on the bikes they might not have caught us.
We were always hanging around the electronics section at a place called Service Merchandise. It was a pretty dismal set-up and it was impossible to get the attention of the one poor slob assigned to that department. At this point they had basically just came out with the television sets with the built-in vcr’s. We ended up dubbing about twenty copies of the adult classic ‘Talk dirty to me’ and in a carefully synchronized movement, we fanned out, cranked the volumes to max, and put a copy in as many sets as we could. Bedlam!! People were running into each other, yelling, screaming, mostly cracking up and I think I saw a large bearded man genuflect and then burst into tears.
Harts.
Various similar shenanigans. I once got busted for shoplifting, but a few years later I stole a TI graphing calculator. It’s now a tractor supply.
Once it was our sanctuary from vandalizing the cemetary. yeah I know it’s wrong now, but back then I didn’t.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane… now where is an update on Nancy and the Translucents?
Murphy’s…
It’s a flat plot of grass at this point; so sad.
When they shut it down my brother and I got to get a bunch of pegboard and some nice scaffolding from the place.
The Saint Albans Mall was our hang-out, it seemed huge, with an endless supply of stores and fun.
Two movie theaters, an amazing game room, National Record Mart, FOOD! and of course “Hot Dog” the T-shirt guy out in the middle…it was great.
Now it’s not even an acceptable “strip-mall”, these sad times…
Before the mall was built they used to have go-cart races there in the late 60’s; what a historic place for a kid.
Back in High School, I was at Murphy’s with a friend of mine who was a drag queen (yes, he started doing drag when he was in high school – we lived at the Grand Palace from the age of 16 on…. never got carded). Anyway, back then, he didn’t want to have to buy bras and other female clothing items out in the open, so he would often shoplift. That day, he lifted a couple of bras or something. I had no clue what he was doing. When we left, Murphy’s security stopped him, but let me go. I felt terrible, having to drive off without him. They eventually called his mom and she had to go pick him up. I don’t think I ever went back there and then, they closed.
Well, where shall I start? I began at an early age ramming my six year old fingers into the packs of hamburger at Buckle’s Supermarket.
I remember being at a K-Mart and playing Pong (often called TV Tennis) for a full 10-hours. Other shoppers were unamused my creation of a personal arcade. I also liked to tune all of the stereos in the electronic’s DEPT to the local rock station at the same time and crank them HIGH.
However, this was a story from my parents that is often retold in our home. They were at a K-Mart in Fredericksburg, VA back in the early days of the store (sometime in the mid 60’s). K-Mart announced thier famous Blue Light Special on trash cans. These titans of marketing had stacked the large, steel trashcans in telescopic fashion all the way to the ceiling–perhaps 30-feet. My dad tells me there were at least a dozen stacks of them. Mom and dad were seated at “The Grill” for which K-Mart was famous, and therefore had a ring-side seat for the mayhem that ensued.
Apparently a throng of bargain hunters came on a dead sprint from three directions upon the blue light announcement. It was announced the sale would last for 2-minutes only or something–inciting a near riot to get a 2 dollar trashcan or whatever. The crowds arrived at the stacks simultaneously and sent the steel towers toppling across ailes and ailes of merchandise. Dad tells me several actually came through the window of the Grill and landed among the diners. People were running wild the and trashcan lids were being slung like hubcaps in a NASCAR garage.
In what must have been an early action that became a custom for my dad, he took a drink of coffee, sighed deeply, and just shook his head.
Buck Out
I just remembered the fake name Mike gave the security guards, after the firecracker incident: Zippo Hartley.
Wonder why they didn’t believe him?
Ya we used to all the same stuff. Someone mentioned go carts. There was a go cart place near us that we used to go to al the time. We would get banned for a bit every once in a while. One night they had left the gate open which led to the parking lot. One of my friends who was in the lead saw it and decided to go for a ride. Well they almost shit when all 10 of us follwed him out into the parking lot and down the access road. It was about 2 miles to the highway and we went all the way there. Turned around and started back. We ran into the “attendants” ( kids on a summer job) in cars chasing us. It took them about an hour to corral all of us. We were finally banned for life but had a great time doing it. I remember in Kmart when the scooters came out wiping out on one and taking a clothes rack with me. I was asked to leave then also.. Good times…
I never ran-a-muck in stores untill I was older. I would go to Toys R Us during the holiday season and play with the toys. They are open till Midnight between thanksgiving and christmas. We never got in trouble. I think the staff was just happy to have some people in the store. even if it was a bunch of stoned teenagers having bouncy ball races down the aisles.
I once played a little hide and seek in a local KMart but had to bail when an employee saw me duck down near the records and called security figuring I was shoplifting.
That’s as far as it went. The stuff that went on at Murphy’s would have gotten me killed if I got busted and the store called Big Lou. The consequences of such a thing don’t bear contemplation.
But the update was hilarious. The firecracker story is destined to be a classic. Great way to start off a weekend.
I remember giving a WV state trooper the name of a punk kid we all hated and everyone started laughing because I was the only one that didn’t know that the very trooper questioning us was dating said punk kid’s sister.
Well, shit!
When I was in high school I had the female version of your friend who took things “too far” – she used to drive the amigo carts around and once she mowed down an entire rack of cards at full speed. It was Hallmark confetti! Of course that was hilarious but I was glad it wasn’t me 🙂 We were always doing stupid things – once we put a Pee-Wee Herman doll on top of the frozen dinners (in the glass freezer cases – it is kind of dim in there so you really didn’t realize it until you accidently grabbed the doll and it emitted that weird high-pitched laugh instead of your turkey pot pie).
And now my eldest is just like how we were. Sigh. It is hard not to laugh but I get tired of hearing about it from her teacher.
cashoe,
Sugerman’s Eynon Drug was the first thing I thought of when I read Jeff’s update.
We were let loose in that store, but were too young at the time to do any of the shit Jeff & company did.
We would walk up to Yorktowne Village – the local strip center – and cause all kinds of trouble. The pinnacle of comedy was for one guy to hold open the door to the chinese restaurant, and another guy to run in, scream and yell at the top of his lungs, and then run out. Oh yeah, throwing mudballs into the mailbox and then watch the mailman come and open it up. Good times.
Being from a different era (and slightly more geeky) we used to mess with the BIOSes on the display PCs in the megamarts – remove the boot device info then set a BIOS password etc – then reboot the machines and get out. Would come back later to see them all sitting their with unsaleable “missing operating system” or “bad boot device” messages on them. Also did the setting all the alarm clocks thing, plus taking the remote from a Sony TV at home to the store then slyly, from over in the camera dept, simultaneously changing the channels/volume etc on all the Sony TVs on display.
Here is my question:
Would that fire cracker cause the logjam to shoot down the flume like it was propelled out of the supercollider?
Or would it slam things shut so to speak?
There was a really cool dept store in Newark DE that was two stories and had tubes like the bank drive thru does and they would “whoosh” cash and papers all over the store. I was college age and too old for pranks. But, I did think the tubes were cool. That may have been the beginning of the internet.
My goodness Jeff, you were a very bad boy! Did the staff at that store demand payola from dear old Mom and Dad for your shenanignas?
Spent a lot of time at the Springfield Mall in my teen years. I thought I was totally all that when left to my own devices there. Now, as I hear it, you take your life into your own hands when you set foot in the door – the gangs have taken it (A MALL, for Pete’s sake) as their ‘turf.
I plead the 5th. And Jeff, thanks for not mentioning me by name in that article. LOL
Something we should’ve done, but I’m just now thinking of it…
We should’ve recorded a cassette tape, and put it into one of the stereos with the volume turned all the way up. It would have two or three minutes of nothing at the beginning, to allow for a getaway. Then, after the blank section, ten minutes or so of shouted profanity and diarrhea sounds.
Man, that would’ve been excellent! Bill, I’ll be in WV for Thanksgiving. Wanna give it a try?
Yeah, but I’m not going to be the “subject” for the diarrhea sounds. I got you covered for the profanity stuff though.
We’ll just record the Lee Ermy boot camp segment from the movie Full Metal Jacket and let’r fly.
Uh, I would suggest if you and Bill decide to proceed with said plan….you use a C-D and NOT a casette. Just an observation.
Buck Out
Buck, I was thinking reel-to-reel myself.
LOL, your firecracker bit was hilarious. It brought back lots of memories of my childhood experiences.
I lived in Italy for 6 months when I was a kid… New years tradition out there involves lots of powerful fire crackers, and these aren’t the ones you get here in Canada, and I doubt they are even available in the US. The wick on these mofos were like flares, which were water proof. They came in all sizes, and the smallest ones out there could literally blow up your hand to bits. You could even blow up rubber garbage bins if you purchased the ZEUS ones.
Anyhow, I brought back a few boxes to Canada (hidding them in my socks through the plane ride!! try that nowadays) and had quite a blast with the other kids. I experimented with them, trying to maximize the sound effects. Funny, but throwing them in puddles would create much more of a bang then on dry ground… However, the pinnacle of loudness involved mailboxes. We would throw one the hatch and walk casually away…. then BOOOOMMM. The thought of people receiving letters full of soot added to the comedy effect. When I think about it now, I can’t believe we did those things… I guess kids don’t always think of consequences because I would never even think of doing that nowadays.
Ahhhh, Murphy’s Mart! We used to call it Murphymart…..kinda run it all together.
Me and my friends used to go there from time to time to “play” as well.
We’d go to the spanking new McDonalds first and get straws and napkins then hike across Dunbar Plaza to Murphy’s. We’d split up into teams, head for opposite sides of the store then let the spitwad battle ensue!!
Good times….
Great picture, by the way!! Do you have anymore “historic” photos from our fair city?If so, I’d be very interested in seeing those!
Oh, tell your Dad and brother Scotty J said hi.
I miss seeing your Dad all the time. Good guy.
I remember one.
My cousin and I were at the mall with our grandmother and we decided that we’d go over to the pet store and purchase a dog. This little pet store always smelled but they had a wall of cats and dogs behind a glass window. So we picked one that we thought might be the cheapest. I’m not sure of the breed but he was black and his legs looked too long for his body. He was also kinda chubby.
My cousin wanted to name him “Willie Nelson” but I objected because I’d named my penis “Willie Nelson” just a couple of days before that. I think he named his penis “Tron” or something like that.
So the guy came over and got the dog out and handed him to me. Charlie, my cousin, was standing several feet away. He crouched down and I sat the dog on the floor so it could go over to him. The dog bolted like nothing you’ve ever seen. He ran out of the pet store and was scurrying around on the tile. Then he stopped and shat. He finally trapped himself between the wall and a trash can and this lady grabbed him.
The pet store guy came out and demanded that we clean up the shit. We refused because it wasn’t yet our dog. He owned the dog, he owned the shit. He called us “sonsabitches” and walked back into the store with the dog. The shit was still there when we walked back by 30 minutes later. Someone had stepped on the end of it and tracked it towards Dillard’s.
I think we only had about forty dollars between us. And they charge 10 times that for their dogs.
A Friday update! Most excellent.
I’d mention some of the things I did as a kid, but there’s not statute of limitations on felonies where I grew up. In my defense, however, I will say that we had no idea just how powerful an M80 is.
The height of fun for us was snowballing cars. I’d kick my own ass now if I could time travel.
Yeah Scotty. We called Murphy’s Mart “Murphy Mart,” but Kroger “Kroger’s.” Go figure. We just went around adding and subtracting S’s all willy-nilly.
Actually, I was pretty well-behaved as a kid. All my screwing around at the store came later, after I split up with my first wife and moved in with my (also separated) younger brother. We liked to shop the Super K-Mart in the middle of the night, by which time we were either drunk or bored or both, with predictable results. Best episode: attempting the Tossing Stuff in the Cart Distance Record with a bag of split peas over three rows, probably about 70 feet we guessed, making it, but having the bag split open on impact — just as a Va Beach cop on his way home was passing the cart. Nice.
That’s funny, I know some dudes who use to do that sort of stuff at the MM in Fairmont. A lot of my record albums and almost all of my model car kits came from that store.
Which reminds me, the first time I saw the Beavis and Butthead episode where they snagging quarters out of the fountain to play video games with, I almost fell out of my chair, as that is very familiar to me also.
Also – I just recalled that I know some dudes who use to go to Sears when PCs first came out, and change the text that was scrolling on the monitor screen to say things such as FUCK YOU SEARS and whatnot.
I’ll bet Father Bob just fell in love with that Further Evidence link.
We didn’t have any Murphy’s Mart here in Florida, but we did have Woolworths, which I’m guessing is pretty similar. I bought my first Chia Pet there.
They had a little diner in the back of the store that sold 25¢ cups of coffee. It was always packed with wrinkles and blue hair (the restaurant, not the coffee). This was back when you could smoke inside of public places – so you could always tell when someone bought you a christmas present from Woolworths – as soon as you unwrap it, you get blasted with someone’s grandma’s second hand smoke. That’s probably why I’m a smoker today.
On another note, if anyone was wondering why the sky is a little bluer, the birds are chirping a little more harmoniously and the sun is shining a little brighter today, it’s because McRib is back. Hurry, it’s for a limited time only.
My big box store asshole extravaganza: Circa 1984, the year that Cabbage Patch dolls were the highly desired, yet unobtainable gift that every Mother desired to buy their child…yet there were virtually NONE to be had in the stores. K-Mart in Anderson Indiana: I got on the PA system via the telephone they have mounted on the wall in each department. (My friend Jeff in Seattle told me the dial in code). I announced “Attention K-Mart Shoppers, We are proud to announce a very special shipment of Cabbage Patch Dolls for sale on aisle 3. Thank you for shopping at K-Mart.”
What ensued in the crowded store was a virtual shark feeding frenzy. The newspaper the next day would describe it as a “near riot.”
Some quick thinking K-Mart employee got on the PA and quickly informed the crowd that “That was NOT a K-Mart employee that made that announcement. We do NOT have any Cabbage Patch dolls for sale!” Quick thinking, but not quick enough.
I was making my way to the exit, when suddenly some do-gooder pointed to me and said to a K-Mart employee, “Hey, That’s HIM!!!!!” I beat it out the front door just as three Anderson PD cars came whipping up in front of the store, lights flashing!
I made a successful escape, but my older sister who was with me told me she would never take me shopping with her again!
BTW, I can’t blame it on being a punk kid…I was 24 years old at the time! I turned 52 on election day, and if I could do the same thing again this Christmas, I probably would!
Somehow, when I was in college, we decided that it would be fun to have bb gun wars. This was before paintball & airsoft guns were big. The only rules we had were to wear goggles and the firearms had to be of the pump variety.
About 10 of us went to K-Mart one morning to get bb guns. Some guys had more money than others and could therefore afford the “nicer” guns. So, we had to test each one out to make sure that it wasn’t too powerful. What started out as an “innocent” test became a full on war inside the K-Mart. We ran around the sports and garden section shooting at each other.
Somehow, we got out of there without the police being called…
Still call it Kroger’s.
I try to go with the proper “Kroger”, but I just can’t seem to make it stick.
Well, Jeff. We always knew you were a ball buster. It just never occurred to me that you used a hammer. Yikes!
I miss those in-store food courts. It was one of those places we used to do a version of the walmart game. Old geezer-check. Cripple-check. Family of screeming kids-check. Smell of french fry’s reaching across the aisles…the crabby lunch lady…