Stuckey's (Hattiesburg, Mississippi)

There were a number of things I wanted to see and do on my last trip (the Grandy's was in one fact one of them) and while I couldn't do some of them there were others that I did do, like visiting a Stuckey's gas station.

The goal was a real Stuckey's, not one of these little gas stations that have some Stuckey's branded items inside (I didn't stop here; plus the nearby abandoned gas stations gave the whole corridor a bad vibe).

Pecan candy! They were expensive, though. Instead I ended up visiting the Stuckey's at 6733 Highway 49, Hattiesburg, MS 39402. While I unfortunately didn't see any coffee mugs (I'm sure I didn't look hard enough) they did have quite a selection of pecan candy and some genuine Stuckey's falsa blankets. (No food service, though.) I ended up getting Brisk Blood Orange because it was the closest thing to what I really wanted...orange sweet tea. Brisk isn't really iced tea, but it was still good anyway.

Aforementioned falsa blankets. I couldn't find the history of this one; just that it was in operation since the 1970s. I don't think I got gas there but still with a drink and my bladder emptied, I was soon on my way to Louisiana. I should also note that had I gone a bit to the east I would've come across one of Mississippi's few former Albertsons locations but unfortunately my main reason for wanting to visit the (former) store was to see if it had remnants of a mall connection to the defunct Cloverleaf Mall but it never did. Too bad. (Check out the link anyway.)

Linens-N-Things (Waco, Texas)

Courtesy McLennan Central Appraisal District Linens-N-Things first opened in September 2001 at 4809 West Waco Drive at an old motel site (Knights Inn in the late 1970s and early 1980s and later known as Sherwood Forest Inn, also the name of its restaurant...though tax records indicate it may have been cheaply converted into a strip center briefly--details are still sketchy). In any case, the current building was no longer a Linens-N-Things after December 2008 when the company went bankrupt. It sat for a few years until early 2014 when GymX Fitness moved from a nearby former Best Buy at the mall, but that too closed in September 2016. In 2019, Renovation Church moved in the right half of the building and in 2020 Waco Carpet moved from 4535 West Waco Drive, fully reoccupying the site.

Cafe de Paris (Dallas, Texas)

Google Street View from May 2014, roughly depicting the time and place I saw it as.
More Dallas-Fort Worth items is something I had been meaning to do on Carbon-izer, and this one requires going back to 2014, one of the few times I've been to Dallas-Fort Worth in the last two decades. It all began with the near-complete demolition of a strip center to construct a new Walmart Supercenter (replacing a Neighborhood Market location). One building from the old center (15757 North Coit Road, Suite 434) was fenced off, likely to be rubble soon, with the Cafe de Paris sign still on it. What kind of a restaurant was Cafe de Paris anyway? The most obvious assumption would be a French restaurant as this one Yelp review thought.

You would be wrong. After all, with a name like "Cafe de Paris" you'd assume French and be surprised that it was Mediterranean. The next question you might have is, as I did, is "how long was this here for"? Maybe it started out as a French restaurant back a long time ago but changed hands, and now was a Mediterranean restaurant under the same name (any jokes about Parisian demographics aside). You would also be wrong. The restaurant only opened in 2011 and disappeared just as quickly but the sign stayed up for a few years afterward even as the center crumbled around it. After sitting vacant for a for years, the building (now with the address of 15767 North Coit Road) was extensively modified (basically taking out all but the support beams) for Surepoint Emergency Center Richardson.

I should also mention that back in 2009-2010, it was M Cafe and Catering, and before that, Bagelstein's (2005-2008).

Kroger (Henderson, Texas)

Street View from 2018. The old Safeway "Food" and "Drug" signs were removed by 2022. Outside of Houston, Dallas, and their immediate suburbs, Kroger supermarkets become quite rare in Texas, especially heading into the East Texas/Davy Crockett Forest area. So it was a bit of a surprise to come across a Kroger in Henderson, Texas. It didn't look like a Kroger initially; my suspicions it was a Dallas Division Safeway that was sold to Kroger in 1987 were gradually confirmed. I later found out the Safeway opened in 1980, relocating from an older 1960s store at 102 Richardson Drive which in turn relocated from an even older store at 212 Van Buren.

I took a few pictures (I didn't actually buy anything initially, though I did end up buying a new and overpriced USB/Thunderbolt cable here (still overpriced) as mine in my car decided to stop working.)

The Safeway "roundel", as Houston Historic Retail would call it, was filled in with a Kroger logo (the good one that was retired a few years ago).

Ryan's (Waco, Texas)

Ryan's as a chain is no more. Sure, it could be blamed on the pandemic, but let's look at a few numbers. Ryan's Family Steakhouse opened in 1992 at 301 S. Valley Mills Drive, accessed off Franklin Drive and off of Precision Drive. In 2006 the chain was acquired by Buffets Inc., owners of Old Country Buffet, with the chain having about 260 restaurants stretching throughout much of the eastern United States, from Ohio to Florida to Texas (though it was clearly shrinking with 350 restaurants in 2003). By November 2019 (before the pandemic took hold), the entire chain was down to 67 restaurants, with Ryan's composing about 16 locations.

The demise of Ryan's came after the Waco location closed. Within a few years the Ryan's would become A-1 Buffet & Grill (a Chinese buffet) and later renamed/reopened as Ace Buffet & Grill, but it closed in fall 2016 and never reopened. This wasn't helped by construction of Franklin around 2005 that made it much more difficult to access Ryan's from the roadway (you had to go back around from Cheddar's Drive). After sitting vacant for several years, the building was torn down in early 2021. Part of the parking lot has since redeveloped as Dutch Bros Coffee, which was operating by May 2024 (with the address of 300 Precision Drive).

This is based after the Valley Mills page at Carbon-izer.com. Pictures generously provided by McLennan Central Appraisal District.

Former Luby's (Orange, Texas)

The current cycle of this blog (until one runs out of ready content) is "I-35", the "July 2024 trip", and "Random". In the "Random" category comes a particular defunct Luby's Cafeteria in Orange, Texas. I previously showed off this photo on my old Carbon-izer page, with the picture taken in November 2006. Luby's opened this location in summer 1997 but closed it in 2003, so it had been sitting for about three years at this point. I wasn't actually trying to seek out this Luby's and even back in 2006 Luby's already seemed like it was on the outs, a dated and dying chain. Would it disappear entirely anytime soon? No, that was to come.

In 2007, the Luby's Cafeteria branding on the building largely disappeared as it became Richard's Cafeteria Grill. After that failed in a matter of months, by 2013 the "Cafeteria" portions had been removed and was advertising as "Richard's Event Center".

That too bombed and in 2014 the parking lot was removed for Crawdad's Convenience Center, an Exxon gas station that shared the same address (with "Moz Grill" inside)...though the former Luby's/Richard's still stands.

Grandy's in Texarkana (Texarkana, Texas)

When I was on my July 2024 road trip, I had a number of things I wanted to do and try. Some of them I wasn't able to get, some of them I was. One of the things I wanted to do and did was eat at a Grandy's restaurant. I was a bit skeptical as I read that Broken Chains had hated it (though the location was very far away from the North Texas base, being located in Evansville, Indiana).

Like a few other sites I'll be covering in the future, Grandy's used to have a more presence locally. They closed the last of their Houston stores in the late 1990s, so I never got to try it (the local store closed even earlier).

As it turns out, it wasn't that old. It was actually built in 2010, moving from an older location at 3225 Kennedy Lane (since demolished for a dental office) but it kept its late 1980s-era charm, which can't be said for another 2010s location in Brunswick, Georgia, which is arguably nicer but is not true to the Grandy's spirit.

My experience, though, was pleasant. The fried chicken was good, if a bit greasy, but everything came out hot and fast and on a real plate instead of various boxes and bags. Perhaps that's why Grandy's suffered over the years; their competition (basically every other fast food restaurant) can stick things in a paper bag and send them on their way.