a short essay on joann fabrics and how much i miss it
I remember almost every trip to Joann. There was a Joann Fabric about ten minutes from the house. It was in a strip mall that had a Pier One Imports, Super Cuts, a baby gym, and Jenny Craig. My brother liked the Jenny Craig. He thought it was funny. When he got to middle school and I got to high school we called the strip mall the one stop shop. The Joann never changed in the fourteen years I lived ten minutes away. It never got bigger or smaller, the aisle with pillows and stuffing scared me no matter how old I was because of the pictures of red haired rag dolls printed onto the front of the bags. Joann smelled the same every time my mom took me, and the same old woman who seriously hated me worked there until we moved away.
When I was in middle school, Mrs. Shreck II gave us a project to knit a scarf which the student council would sell during lunch for an unclear cause. I had already learned how to knit a while before. I used the same pink needles my mom bought me and new yarn she got at the store. Mrs. Shreck II did not teach very well. She just yelled. I gave my mom the first scarf because I thought she might love it. I knit a new lumpy one with lots of holes in it out of Frida’s purple yarn while half-watching the The Tempest in Mrs. Whaley’s English.
I don’t remember how old I was when I learned how to knit but I know it was a very long time ago. I was taught how to do lots of things women are traditionally supposed to know how to do and I like it that way. I didn’t have to fight so hard to learn those things like I had to fight to learn how to change the oil on a car. One day my mom bought a soft and bubbly looking salmon pink Lion yarn and some thin pink knitting needles. I sat in the kitchen while she cooked dinner while she helped me learn how to knit. The kitchen smelled like chicken so my yarn did too. I did not do well. The lumpy attempt at a scarf got shoved back in the Joann bag and lived in my closet until I pulled the needles out of it in seventh grade. Sometimes when it rained I would pick the scarf back up but my stitches were never as perfect as my mom’s.
I lived in Thousand Oaks, California for three months about five years ago. Our house was an hour from the beach and two hours from a strip mall that had a discount version of a furniture store that was like Victoria’s Secret, namely in the prices and colors and frills, but for people that love furniture, not undies. My brother wanted to go before we moved out of the area. I couldn’t blame him, that’s how I felt about the beach. My dad took my brother and I to the furniture store per the orders of my mother who had a headache that day and didn’t want us around making so much noise. The house we lived in was very small.
The drive seemed much longer than two hours; we passed by lots of things. There is a road in Texas that I take sometimes when I drive to a fancy grocery store I like to go to for sushi which reminds me of the road to the strip mall. There is a lack of strip malls with quality, shitty looking stores in Texas. There are run-down strip malls, but they’re not exactly the same as the ones scattered all over California. The strip mall that my dad drove us to was right past a lot of orange buildings and up a hill which was coated in flags and banners pointing cars coming up the hill to the discounts. We were supposed to turn in and park and go to the furniture store but my dad saw a store that was out of business with people coming out of it. We sat in the car while he watched a father and son carrying out shelves from the store. My dad said it was probably for their own store–closeout sales were a great way to build up your own store he said. His dad owned a hardware store. My dad said we should go in. My brother and I laughed at him, our mom would never have let him think that. My dad was curious and he told us we were going, it wasn’t up for debate, and we would only be a little bit. We could go to the fancy discount furniture store afterwards.
The biggest mystery was what store we were in. There was no sign on the front, there were no indicators on the inside of the store. We walked around looking at the remnants of product, the type of shopping carts the store had, and the mishmash of departments. We passed by a closeout sale sign that had been left up from when the store was technically in business. We had walked into a Fry’s Electronics, the last open one we knew of. My dad had spent a good portion of his childhood and young adulthood going to Fry’s. He had even taken my brother to the Fry’s in Hollywood once. That was the space themed one. I had never been because it was a “boy activity”.
I went to Joann alone a few weeks ago and it reminded me of the Fry’s. One day I will go into a big box store and I will notice the layout of the store and I will wonder if it used to be a Joann.
Someone remind me to take pictures of the stores I like to go to. I’ve got to have something tangible.
