Only a Northern Song

I had breakfast quickly, then called Uber. It was getting late by that point, almost quarter of 12. That may be why I had a hard time getting a driver. The first one canceled. Fortunately, the second arrived in 8 minutes. He dropped us off at The Nerd Mall in Woodbury within 15 minutes, with no problems on the road.

Woodbury is a lovely little town in Gloucester County, not far from Deptford. It's one of the oldest towns in the entire area. Some of the buildings date back to the Revolutionary War era. The Nerd Mall is in one of the Victorian buildings downtown. It's shelves and shelves and boxes and boxes of comic books, collectible action figures, board games, vintage video games, role playing games, and stuffed toys related to all of the above. I was hoping to find Match Game or Family Feud among the board games, but I only saw the Feud DVD game. I saw vintage Password games (two of them going back to 1962), but none of the others.

Though there's no longer an arcade in the back game-playing room, they do still have small arcade cabinets there. Some of them are small enough for the pre-school kids from Thomas Sharp to have no trouble reaching the controls! I did mildly well on regular Centipede. At least I got to the second round, which isn't something I could ever pull off as a kid. 

While Lauren finished buying wrestling Nintendo games and a collectible figure at The Nerd Mall, I found a tiny little deli-variety store next door. It was so small and family-owned, it had one of the widest varieties of drinks I'd ever seen in a store. I ended up with Sunkist Zero. Lauren got the limited edition Berry Blue Powerade when she joined me. 

Our next stop was 2nd Chance Thrift Boutique in the next block over. They're always something of a mess. I couldn't find anything I wanted in the jammed-full racks of old clothes and piles and piles of toys, CDs, and DVDs. Lauren had more luck and picked up a few shirts.

We did better at the Woodbury Antiques store on the next block. Situated in what appears to have once been a Woolworth's, this has more in common with a one-story Haddon Heights Antique Center than with 2nd Chance. For one thing, they sell actual antiques. Unfortunately, a lot of what they sell is very expensive. Lauren found three mini Beanie Babies still in their McDonald's Happy Meal bags that were a reasonable price. Their records are way overpriced, but I picked up two CDs:

Elton John - Ice On Fire

Grover Washington Jr. - All My Tomorrows

LC's Family-Style Restaurant was on the next block. They specialize in Latin American cuisine...but I suspect they didn't have a lot of help today. I never saw anyone besides the one girl behind the counter and a woman having lunch with her baby. We watched two and a half episodes of Spongebob Squarepants on the TV in the side room, including "Bubble Boy" (Spongebob's bubble friend annoys everyone in Bikini Bottom), "Something Smells" (Spongebob and Patrick think everyone is running away from them because they're ugly - it's their breath that's the problem), "Big Pink Loser" (Patrick takes a job at the Krabby Patty, then imitates Spongebob to win awards), "Bossy Pants" (Pearl's new ideas for the Krabby Patty are losing her dad money...and Spongebob has to fire her), and "Spongebob BC." (SpongeBob and his crew are cave sea-dwellers.) At least Lauren's Cubano sandwich and my grilled chicken sandwich with thick fries were pretty decent when we did finally get them.

After lunch, we headed across the street to On the Record. This time, Lauren didn't make any finds, but I grabbed two records and two CDs I really wanted after I dodged a couple of music-lovers searching the local band albums. The records were:

Beryl Berney Tells Your Favorite Stories: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Dick Whittington (I have no idea who Beryl Berney is. I do know I've never seen a record retelling of the British folk tale "Dick Whittington.") 

Ben Bagley's Cole Porter Vol. III (Cost me $25, the most of anything today besides lunch, but I love these Ben Bagley collections.)

The CDs were something I've wanted for a while. Yellow Submarine was the last regular Beatles album I didn't have. I've been looking for a good price on it for ages. Not only did they have it on CD for $6, but they had the blue "Songtrack" CD from 1999 for the same price. I bought both. 

The original SNTM Thrift Shop is next-door to On the Record. They're more like 2nd Chance with slightly better merchandise...but apparently, they're moving to better digs in November. They've already moved some things to a charming Victorian building about two blocks down Broad Street. I didn't find anything at either location, but Lauren picked up tank tops for her and shirts for her father. 

We hiked back to The Nerd Mall to pick up Uber. By 4 PM, it was hot, humid, sunny, and hazy, probably in the upper 90's. Thank heavens the driver didn't cancel this time, even if it took a little longer than the listed 13 minutes for him to arrive. We weren't going far, anyway. He dropped us off at the Deptford Goodwill in a little over 5 minutes.

The Woodbury Goodwill moved to The Plaza at Deptford back in March...and no wonder. The store was enormous, easily three times the size of the Woodbury building. It took me 20 minutes just to sift through all of the records piled on a bottom shelf, but I came up with:

Sesame Street Story Time

"Mama" Cass Elliott - Dream a Little Dream of Me

Walt Disney Presents the Story of Robin Hood (Which, ironically, I also saw at On the Record for $10 - a slightly less-pristine copy at Goodwill was $2.49.)

Plato's Closet is on the other side of the Plaza from the Goodwill. It's another local thrift shop chain, this one specializing entirely in clothes and accessories. It's so big, there's two floors. The guys' clothes are on the lower level. Neither of us had any luck here...but I'm glad to know it is there the next time I do need clothes for a decent price.

We finished up at Mt. Fuji Hibachi Restaurant a few doors down from the Goodwill. We didn't go for the hibachi. As Lauren said, we just wanted dinner, not dinner and a show. Lauren was fine with sushi and a large salad. My shrimp with udon noodles, vegetables, and a small salad were yummy, too. We enjoyed them at the quiet, dark-paneled room with the fish swimming around a tank in the lobby. (A mother's tired little boy was utterly fascinated by those goldfish as we were heading out.)

Another thing I like about the Plaza is it has ample seating. We settled down at one of the wide benches as I called Uber. Thank heavens after the last two, there were no problems here. The driver arrived in the advertised 8 minutes and got us home in 15 with no trouble.

Put on Match Game '75 when I got home. This was the last of three weeks to feature Cuban bombshell Louisa Moritz, and the only one with producer and character actor Sheldon Leonard. I'm not sure Leonard entirely got the humor, but at least he took all of the gangster jokes like a good sport.

I finished the night watching News Hounds on Tubi. Sach (Huntz Hall) and Slip (Leo Gorcey) are working for a newspaper again, as a photographer and copy boy respectively. Slip would do anything to have his story in the paper, especially after he turns up evidence of gangster Dapper Dan Greco (Anthony Caruso) fixing boxing matches. Sach gets photos of the gangsters, but loses the camera with the pictures when they figure out who the guys are. Slip never intended for his story to be published, but his friend Gabe (Gabriel Dell), who was working with the gangsters but got thrown out, has it published under the name of the sports reporter John Burks (Tim Ryan) anyway. The gangsters slap the newspaper with a four million dollar lawsuit. Now the guys have to find those pictures, or everyone will lose their jobs...and the paper will get into a heck of a lot of trouble.