7/11/2021 Memory Jogging...

My kind of jogging.😂

As I sat down to write my ramblings for the day I took note of the date and it brought back a flood of childhood memories with my sister... The 7-Eleven store. We used to walk or drive the two blocks from her house to reward ourselves.

7-Eleven is one of the world's largest franchise companies. It is a retailer that operates more than 60,000 convenience stores, mostly in North America and Asia. The typical outlet is small in size and carries a limited stock of food, drinks, and other high-turnover products but stays open long hours. Although now a subsidiary of the Tokyo-based Seven & i Holdings, 7-Eleven is headquartered in Dallas. The stores trace their origin to 1927, when several icehouse companies—which primarily sold block ice for food preservation to households without electric refrigerators—merged to form the Southland Ice Company in Dallas. Either after the merger, or shortly before it, one of the icehouses also began selling food items. Southland Ice soon took up general retailing, installing attention-getting Native American totem poles in front of some of its stores and adopting the name Tote’m Stores, which served as a punning invitation to customers to “tote” their purchases away. Joe C. Thompson, Sr., became president of Southland Ice in 1931. During the Great Depression the company went through bankruptcy. It emerged with a new emphasis on food and drink, especially after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, when beer and liquor were first offered for sale. In 1946 the stores were renamed 7-Eleven to call attention to their extended hours of operation—from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM, seven days a week. About the late 1950s, Southland began to expand beyond Texas, opening 7-Eleven stores on the East Coast. Joseph Thompson’s son, John P. Thompson, became president in 1961 and further expanded operations in the United States and elsewhere. Starting in 1963 some outlets stayed open 24 hours a day, and the following year the company began to franchise its stores.

Yes our reward and fond memories were the 7-Eleven company’s signature products, the Slurpee, an iced drink introduced in 1966, and the Big Gulp, a 32-ounce (946-ml) cup for fountain drinks, introduced in 1976. After the Big Gulp proved highly popular, the company added even larger-sized “gulps.”

Those were the days of candy, snacks and singing with the car radio.

Love reliving the memories and days of old...

Nana