Before Walmart and Amazon, THESE Owensboro Stores Ruled Christmas

With Christmas shopping in full swing, let's take a look back at some mostly defunct department stores that once dominated the holiday shopping season. Oh, the memories.

Big Blue Stores

We had two Big Blue Stores in Owensboro. The buildings are still with us; the chain is not. Located on Carter Road and at the corner of Byers Avenue and New Hartford Road, they were flush with December traffic. My dad was a huge fan. Big Blue is long gone, but I did find this cool old ad for a little jolt of nostalgia.

S.W. Anderson's Department Store

This was the Christmas shopping mecca when I was a child. I loved this place, even though it didn't have a toy department...not even at Christmas. That was usually a dealbreaker, but not with Anderson's. A department store in the classic 1940s style of retail architecture, it closed in 1988. Later, it would become the home of the Owensboro Museum of Science and History. It's always nice to still see that iconic old gold building.

King's Department Store

When you visit Owensboro's Consumer Mall on East 4th Street, you're walking through the closest thing the city had to a Walmart back in the 1970s. King's was a huge department store with a massive toy section. That was always important. Plus, it had some of the best hamburgers I've ever eaten. The entire chain closed in 1984. Here's a news story about its College Park, Maryland, store shuttering in 1982.

Service Merchandise

I was a big fan of Service Merchandise and the unique way of shopping. It was like a catalogue showroom. You'd choose the item you like, but then you'd take a filled-out form about the item to the clerk. It would then roll out on a conveyor belt. Owensboro's location in Towne Square North is now HIS Church.

Kuesters Do It Center

Kuesters was a wildly popular hardware and home improvement chain that was so proud of its toy department that it used this as, arguably, its most famous slogan: "Only Santa has more toys than Kuesters." When I was a kid, I thought that was odd for a hardware store. What did I know, right?

If you drive by the old Kuesters store on Carter Road, it looks like it's still open. It's borderline ghostly that it doesn't look any different than when it was open more than 20 years ago.

So...what are your favorite old Christmas shopping haunts?