Any time I’m called “Sir” or “Mr. ____” it’s a young retail slave who’s so afraid of offending someone that they’re erring on the overly formal, impersonal side.
My reaction is always sadness: “You poor kid. You’re afraid you’ll get fired if you don’t say everything right, aren’t you?”
I still use (the French versions of) “ma’am and sir” in public but I increasingly feel like I’m the weirdo for doing so :(. Even people barely younger than me don’t really use these forms of address.
I was at an interment in Illinois 2 years ago, and undertakers are still providing paper fans. Felt like I’d stepped back into the 1950’s…
Heh, big change from the days when everyone had an entire spare set of crockery and cutlery that anyone they actually knew and liked wasn’t allowed to use except at Christmas, right?
One thing I noticed in 2016 that I don’t recall from any previous election; calling candidates by their first names. Maybe not in the media, but most ordinary people didn’t refer to the two Democratic candidates as “Secretary Clinton” and “Senator Sanders”. They were Hillary and Bernie.
I think for Clinton this was because there was another “Clinton” tied in with the presidency and people were attempting to distinguish Hillary from Bill, while for Bernie it was a deliberate branding decision (he didn’t want to be the more formal looking candidate). But I don’t think that’s really unique; Bush Jr. was called “W” or “Dubya” by a lot of people instead of his last name, “Bob Dole” and “John Kerry” were much better known than “Senator Dole” or “Senator Kerry,” even as far back as Eisenhower “I like Ike” was a campaign slogan.
Lest we forget how pervasive “Tricky Dick” was. But I never recall anyone calling President King “Leslie”, as mercilessly mocked for just about everything else as he was.
That’s horrible. 
I used to wear them unfolded, if that’s the right term. They tended to be worn with the bottom bit doubled up and the top bit doubled up, but I took to wearing them full length, keeping them in place with a large elastic band. My version probably looked even goofier than most, but going to and fro on a low-powered moped in the winter, they did actually serve a reasonable leg-warming purpose, just not their original one*. 
Woolworth’s?
One I noticed riding the L last Saturday on Chicago’s North Side: 30 years ago, it seemed like professional baseball teams had a limited number of players who wore the team uniform. In fact, I was thinking there was a limit of something like 25 players on the roster. But there were entire trainloads of people in uniform riding to Wrigley Field. Some were surprisingly young, and some were surprisingly out of shape. Many seemed to have the same surname and number.
Road atlases of a region or state which list attractions all around the area are especially useful when you haven’t decided where you’re going yet.
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This rack had the usual Rand-McNally national atlases. Like thus but with a 2019 date. (I was wondering if they were trying to dump their soon-to-be-outdated stock.)
That would be the one.
While the grocery store thing is pretty recent and AFAIK nationwide, the ‘beer run’ one varied a lot from state to state. For example, in NC beer isn’t sold at liquor stores, only liquor is sold there, and getting beer on holidays like the Fourth wasn’t that bad because convenience stores would still be open and sold beer.
Have you tried dollar stores?
Woolworth’s? and candy counter
The last time I bought a Rand-McNally USA/Canada atlas–and this would have been sometime in the mid-to-late '90s–Sprawlmart had special “Sprawlmart Editions” of same available next to the standard edition, for a buck or two less. The difference was two leaves added to the outside of the standard edition (so four extra pages in front and four more in the back–with the cover still on the outside, but “Sprawlmart edition” printed in the corner), containing lots of Sprawlmart info–like a listing of all the Sprawlmarts & Spam’s Clubs in the country, with street addresses, phone numbers, a chart of which services were available at each (auto shop, gas/diesel, etc.), and IIRC, even the page number and grid info for each location. Big with the RVing crowd, surely. I have no idea if a similar cross-promotion exists, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it does.
I will try that next time (for soap), but since I bought a 6 pack of Dove special manly smells green/blue whatever, I won’t need it for awhile. I mostly use dollar stores for parchment paper ($1 instead of $5.49 or whatever), foil sheets, and stuff like that and don’t go often. Also, I remember it was Lever I was looking for and not Ivory (I switched awhile back) , but Walmart had neither.
Postal Workers wearing a uniform. It’s really weird to me to see a guy wearing casual clothes driving around in a Mail Jeep.