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White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 7:32 am
by kid1955
I remember when White Front opened, it was the first of its kind in Fresno. I bought my first 8mm movie camera there with money that I saved from my paper route. The curved entrance was really funky. I no longer live in Fresno but I heard it burned down?

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 11:03 am
by gilmo
Great photo I forgot about the arch in the front. Wasn't (as my dad would have said) Monkey Wards out in that area of Blackstone also.

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:09 pm
by Just surfed by
Monkey Wards? Oh yeah, my recollection is when it was being built, I was hired as a security guard to watch the construction supplies. Ran my car behind a 12 year old kid on a bicycle and shouting into my PA HORN, the he was there illegally and had to vacate immediately. Only action I ever got. Oh, yeah big 'ol mean security guard throwing his weight around on a 12 year old. Grew up a tad since then. Now my 12 year old orders me around.

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 4:21 pm
by Jackie
Holy Cow! That was shot from the past! Was White Front a chain? I think they had submarine sandwiches at a kiosk in the front of the store. My Mom thought it was a good cheap way to feed a bunch of kids.

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 1:21 pm
by scottnbunty
Yes, it was a chain, and I guess I just don't understand the nostalgic fastination with White Front, let alone why such a relatively generic, not-unique-to-Fresno commercial concern would appear on a top ten list. Harpain's Dairy, certainly; Triple JJJ Drugs, perhaps -- but White Front, huh-uh.

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 5:34 pm
by Guest
As a kid we did not travel much (Selma was considered "out of town") so Fresno was my frame of reference. If it was in Fresno I assumed it originated in Fresno. So for me, White Front was my first exposure to that kind of super store retailing and I never saw one anywhere else. Same with JC Penney's, I was almost teenager before I realized that Penney's and escalators were not unique to Fresno. Once those memories are patterned by the brain, the feelings of nostalgia are not dimisnished by mere fact.

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:57 pm
by Hamm On Wry
Those subs were not at White Front, they were at K Mart. I was hired at White Front for my first (legal) job, stocking shelves and moving merchandise. I never made enough money to actually buy anything there. White Front did have a deli, but it was more of a sit down place.

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:17 pm
by Conehead_Mayor
White Front? We got your White Front right here!

http://pleasantfamilyshopping.blogspot. ... _8544.html

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 10:16 pm
by DJ
We were sitting at home one afternoon, when we heard on the local FM radio station, "Come to White Front and meet Cheech & Chong"! Well, we were in the car heading down there in mere moments, expecting to have to push through a crowd of people to meet them. We always entered through the back entrance because it was closest to the record section where we expected them to be. We walked in and to our surprise, there sitting at a school type lunch table were the infamous duo with NO ONE there but them!! We spent at least 45 minutes talking to them and laughing with them at all the people walking by staring at these two "Long-Haired Oddballs". Not one person knew who they were! They were "cutting-up" for us, giving a personal "Live' performance from tracks off of there debut album, "Big Bamboo"!! It felt to me as if people were afraid of them! We laughed with them until I felt ill! They did the whole "Dave's Not Here" skit once they found out that was my name! We had a BLAST and no one EVER approached them while we were there! That will forever be my treasured memory of White Front!

Re: White Front, the first Walmart

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:15 pm
by Christopher Stone
Yes, there were White Front stores up and down the West Coast. I believe Zodys bought the chain in the mid-late 1970s.