Thursday, March 25, 2021

New A&P for Vermilion – 1961


Here’s another ad that didn’t quite make it onto the blog last month. It’s for the Grand Opening of Vermilion’s brand-new A&P grocery store, and it ran in the Lorain Journal sixty years ago on Feb. 28, 1961. 

The A&P was located in the South Shore Shopping Center.

The ad is kind of funny, with the large clip art of a woman’s face (not unlike the one emblazoned on the Cavalier China storefront) and the odd illustration of the man, which looks like it was created on an Etch A Sketch.

A&P has been a favorite topic on this blog. It’s still incredible to me after all these years that the mighty A&P chain is no more. 

My mother dragged my siblings and me to at the Lorain Plaza A&P many times back in the 1960s. I still remember one shopping trip during which a friendly cashier commented on my ‘chubby cheeks’ and gave one a good pinch. (Today the same thing would probably result in a lawsuit and extended coverage on social media.)

A&P hung on in Canada for a while, right into the 2000s. For many years the one in Niagara Falls (now it’s a Metro store) was our final shopping stop before heading back over the border to the good old U.S.A. I would fill the car trunk with all our Canadian favorites: pea-meal bacon, Billy Bee honey, Kraft Peanut Butter, Tim Horton coffee, etc. (The U. S. border agent peeked in our trunk once and said, “What, did you go to Canada just to buy groceries?”)

2 comments:

LHS Blazer Man said...

Dan, Speaking of grocery stores, would you do a post about the Fisher Foods store that was on Broadway near Heilman's restaurant?

Dan Brady said...

I did a post about its closing here:

https://danielebrady.blogspot.com/2018/11/downtown-lorain-fisher-fazio-closes-nov.html

But I’ll see if I can dig up anything else. And thanks for all the great comments that you leave! I appreciate it!