Memories of Grandma and the mall

YouTube - Buckingham Square Mall Tribute Trailer

You might wonder why I have posted a YouTube link on my blog. I wish I could figure out how to put this on so you don't have to click this link and you could just watch this on my blog. But I was pretty upset here recently to find out in 2007 this mall was torn down. This mall is the reason I love malls. It sounds silly but I will tell you why. Looking at the video, the mall had not changed much from when it opened in 1971 that could be good reason why it didn't survive. Here is my nostalgia from my childhood.

I think it was in about 1976 that my mom, baby sister and I moved to my grandma's house in Aurora Colorado. My mom and had dad had divorced and this was mom's fresh start. The start was bumpy to say the least with two little girls and very little skills to go on. So it was a difficult time for mom. As she was getting on her feet and for the 6 years of the time we spent in Denver we were Buckingham Square almost as often as we were at my grandma's house. My Grandma worked in the Pant and Top shop. In the YouTube video it was in the last shot before the end. It was the store on the left next to the marble wall where Joslins was. We would go to see Grandma at work, or we would go with Grandma to work sometimes. I remember sitting in the back of the store and we would watch a little black and white television. We seem to spend endless amounts of time there, I was allowed when I was somewhat older to walk the mall on my own. I was about 5 when we moved there, so could you imagine these days letting your kids roam the mall at about 7? I was well behaved and very responsible. Outside Grandma's store there was a puppet show several times a year. I was at the mall so long some times that I got to watch several of his shows in one day. I was never allowed to go far when I was little.
My grandma and grandpa loved to take us out to eat and it was always at this mall. Number one on the list of places to go was Furrs cafeteria. We ate there so many times and grandma thought is was hilarious that Melissa and I would always get Macaroni and Cheese. Melissa would get jello for dessert and I would go between the pumpkin pie or the custard pie. But we never did vary from those choices much. Sometimes we would eat at the restaurant by Wal-greens and not very often we would go to the top floor of Joslins to the little restaurant they had there.
When I was left on my own with my sister I would walk through Wal-greens and look at the toys. Then I think there was a lingerie shop we would go into but we would ignore the lingerie and look at the dolls they had. I thought they were beautiful dolls with big hoop skirts and fancy hair. Many of them had music boxes on the bottom and the dolls would spin. I wanted one of these beautiful dolls so badly. I loved to go Baskin Robbins to get my very favorite Grape sherbet ice cream. I have yet to find a Baskin Robbins today that carries that ice cream. There was a burger place close to Grandma's store that I liked to go to. I remember eating in there. I was scared very easily when I was little and there was this big happy face that had this tongue that came out and licked it's lips. I remember it would happen every so often and it made a noise when it was about to start. I would run out of the restaurant when it would start and then I knew I had a few minutes before it started again. Eventually I got over my complete fear and just had a little anxiety but a total fascination with the happy face with the mechanical tongue. That place was there a long time but I think it became a pizza place later. Or maybe it had been the other way around. Either way that creepy smiley face stayed. I saw the Fox and the Hound for the first time at the movie theatre there and I think that was the first movie I went to by myself.
My mom had a couple of jobs at that mall too. She worked at Montgomery Ward for a time and then she worked in the office another time on weekends. So we did spend a lot of time there still.

The mall smelled like chlorine because of all the fountains and when I came back and visited years later some of them were filled in with plants. But what was always there was the bridge. When we were little we would beg to go down to the bridge and run right back and we would beg for coins to throw in the fountain around the bridge. Many, many wishes were made in the fountains in that mall. But the bridge was the best. We were the most entertained by that bridge.

I loved visiting all the malls in Denver during holidays. They had the cutest animatronic displays. I just loved all the moving creatures and I loved watching them more than I ever wanted to visit with Santa. Buckingham Square had a train always at Christmas and we had to ride that every year. I hated balloons after my mom accidentally popped one of mine in the mall. I love Swedish fish because I use to get them from the little candy store thing they had in the middle of Sears. So everytime we went in the Sears entrance to the mall I had to have some. I got my most favorite pair of shoes ever at the Hush Puppy shoe store and that was the best shoe store ever because you could climb up to this special carpeted area to look at shoes and watch their fish. I liked to play in that store more than I probably should have. I don't remember anyone ever saying an unkind thing to me.
The time we spent in Denver were challenging for my mom. We spent a lot of time with my grandparents and they did their best to make sure we were well taken care of. Because of the hours spent at Buckingham Square mall and another favorite mall of mine Cinderella City( that mall is also gone), I do enjoy the mall very much. It always makes me think of my grandma.
Right now I live 5 minutes away from the mall here. Everytime a store shuts down I feel sad and I mourn that store like the death of a friend. I don't have to spend money there but there is something retail does to me that brings me contentment in some silly way. I am sad that Mervyns is gone the most. I miss the Disney Store and the Marketplace gifts and several other stores I have liked very much. My grandma passed away a few years ago and to know that Buckingham square was gone and that I could never go back and revisit many hours of where much of my childhood was spent, made me very sad. It's not like I had plans to go back but I have lived in so many different places it was one constant, like grandma's house. When we vistied Denver a visit to grandma's wasn't complete unless we went there, to Buckingham Square.