SS......
We never ventured to west Knoxville very much when I was a kid - the two big stores we frequented were Sears on North Central and K-Mart in North Gate Plaza. I think the North Gate Plaza was the largest K-Mart in town followed by the one on Kingston Pike. The NGP K-Mart had everything including major appliances and a complete furniture department which was on an upper level loft in the back of the store - had a huge grand type stair case that you could enter from the left or right on the main floor. Underneath the furniture loft was the resturant - had pretty good burgers, various plate type meals etc and nice fountain for carbonated sodas as I remember too.
Spent about equal time between Sears and K-Mart back then - sure do miss those places - K-Mart is still at NGP but is not anything like it used to be and the North Central Sears building is still there and was renovated for county government offices back in the early 90s after sitting vacant for a few short years after Sears moved to West Towne Mall.
In many ways, back then, those were the best of times...... would that we could have some of them back - sigh.... Don't know how long you've been in Knoxville (from here?) but if you have been here very many years you might remember the old Zayers over off Baxter Ave which ran off North Central at Holy Ghost church just below Sears. That was an interesting old place - sort of a bargin basement type store but had that huge wood staircase to the 2nd floor that sounded like it was ready to fall down with every step up or down the thing. It was a hoot!
