It strikes us now that it might be possible to trace — to certain degree, anyway — certain periods American history according to the rise and fall of certain iconic retail and restaurant chains.
If you were bothering to follow American misadventures in Iraq, you might have been doing so over coffee in a Starbucks, whose proliferation seemed to explode about the turn of the millennium.
At the time you were reading about special prosecutors searching for presidential debauchery in the 1990s, you were probably also finding thinkpieces in the same day's newspaper about the so-called Wal-Mart effect.
About the same time the nation watched its president's lips promise no new taxes, it was also watching — and rewinding, to be kind — videotapes it had rented at Blockbuster.
And if you were around back when people were covering Iran's hostages, the Reagan assassination attempt and Iran-Contra, you might have heard them doing so on a ham radio you built out of parts you could only find at RadioShack.
Yes, RadioShack, home to early electronics enthusiasts and wannabe mad scientists everywhere. If you needed an odd kind of battery or elusively esoteric kind of transistor during the 1970s or 1980s, you inevitably found your way to RadioShack. We're certain there's a particular kind of person of a particular age out there who was almost surely taken aback by the news this week that RadioShack intends to close 1,100 outlets nationwide.
Bad business news, to be sure. But the fact those closures only represent (an admittedly significant) fraction of existing RadioShack stores ought to give you some idea just how pervasive its reach became during its heyday.
Think about its place in the history of technological developments. Consumer electronics started booming in the 1970s and the demand for alkaline batteries had never been greater. Audiophiles found every cable and connector they needed to put a needle on a record. When the early generations of home video game consoles debuted they could be found at RadioShack. When cable television got big in the mid 1980s, people raced to RadioShack for remotes the size of laptops and coaxial cable to string throughout their homes. When personal computing took off a few years later, there was RadioShack selling TRS-80s for several hundred 1977 dollars. When cellular phones made the scene in the early 1990s, RadioShack might have sold you one in a bag that could otherwise accommodate a dozen iPhones.
For the earliest possible generation of digital natives, RadioShack was a cultural touchstone, a place where other people spoke your language. It was our El Dorado.
There's been no word so far whether the RadioShacks in our region will survive the cut. But we hope they do. Because — and let's face it — you never know when you're going to need an ultrasonic ping sensor on a moment's notice.