The Antique Mall

Naturally while living in Yuma, Arizona I had the desire to shop at the local mall, after all I am a girl and I do love to shop.  As a general rule I preferred a mall as you have many shops to choose from at one location.  After seeking out the mall address and directions I was looking forward to my trip to the stores.   I had my mental list (shorts for sure) and a pocket full of money.  I drove according to the directions given me.  When I got to the mall I was pleasantly surprised as it seemed to have more stores than I anticipated although they did appear to be older.  I wasn't concerned, I was certain that even if the building was old the merchandise would be up to date

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I entered my first store and was amazed to find wooden plank floors.  I mean, beautiful, old wooden floors.  The kind that make that loud hollow sound when you walk on them.  They were beautiful!  They were old!  I was so mesmerized by the sound my shoes made on the floors and by the look of these wonderful floors that I actually forgot to shop.  I walked around the entire mall looking at the floors.  They went throughout the entire mall.  The wood was a rich honey color and were well oiled.  I don't even know if they oil wood floors any more but they did back then.  I spent nearly half of a day just walking around gazing at these beautiful floors

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You must remember that I was an architecture major in college so things like this were so interesting to me.  I know those floors were old, I don't know if they were brought from another place and used there or if they were original to that particular mall.  The floors were not on a slab because the sound of wooden floors is completely different on a slab floor than a crawl space floor.  A slab floor will have a dull sound added to the thump of the heal hitting the wood, a crawl space will add a hollow, deep sound added to the thump of the heal hitting the wood, this floor had the hollow, deep sound.  I checked to see if this mall still exists, but did not find it under "malls", it could however still exist as another type of service building. 

 

The title of this blog is "The Antique Mall".  I chose that because while the mall did not sell a single antique, the mall itself was a complete Antique.