re: What Happened to Army Surplus Stores?

Used to love going to those. Rare. I know I saw one somewhere in east texas

quote:

---

Big part of my childhood was Claude cutting my hair then going to Perret’s to get camping gear

---

I've still got a 3 gallon cast iron pot with lid and a couple machetes I got from Perret's 20+ years ago.

Those machetes have cut down lots of weeds and that pot has cooked many gumbos and jambalayas since then.

I've also still got a pair of Army boots I use when riding my motorcycle.

There was one in Austin way before SA, like in the 50s. It was right under 35 just north of downtown. We would drive up to just shop there before there was one in SA.

For the Lar-porators it's all online. 20yr old stuff is that crap camo pattern from mid 2000's I think. I have bought some rucks and dump pouches. They are handy at an outdoor range you can run around at.

quote:

---

We would go in there on a Saturday with five or six dollars and buy a bunch of .30 cal ammo (WWII and Korea surplus) and then go shoot turtles and snakes at his farm pond all afternoon

---

why shoot harnless turrles?

I like turtles

Best one I've been to was in Lampasas, down the road from Ft Hood

When I was in high school in the early 80s our track/cross country team didn’t have money for team warmup suits. One of our guys suggested parachute pants and some kind of jacket. We got approval from our coach and we went to the Army/Navy surplus store in Birmingham and picked out some stuff. Kinda sounds silly now but we thought we were cool and different. I couldn’t tell you if there are any surplus stores around anymore.

We did win the 1982 3A cross country state championship.

Gone... Just like mom and pop stores.

First off. When I would go there as a kid... I would buy something for lets say $15... Now those same items are demanding $400-$600... It's outrageous.

In the 70's you were still only 25 years outside of WWII... There was still massive amounts of War Material available because we produced so much War material. With the Jet age, and Nuclear weapons, it all became obsolete overnight.

The Government had stockpiles and stockpiles of surplus. You could buy pallets upon pallets of things like haversacks, helmets, and bayonets.. Todays military doesn't demand that. It is not an all out war production today like in 1941.

And not only did the stockpiles of goods start become smaller as time went by, but now folks were having to buy sporting goods from China as our economy started changing,, That cost more now. And commercial property rents started going up and Army Surplus had to also start competing with Acadamy Sports etc.

I miss the days of the Army Surplus.. Great times back then. But I have a room now that smells just like those old Army Surplus stores smelled back then.

Here's another sort of reason why... I have a German Army Helmet that a friend gave me. He found it in a pile of burned out trash from behind an old house. (We knew the people)... Anyways... The guy come home from WWII and he brings home a german helmet as a war trophy.. Not really worth much as there were millions of them back then. But it meant something to him.

To those kids that were boomers and such back then, these things were just junk metal, No real value. You could get more money from scrap metal by the pound than you could get for the helmet... The old helmet was just thrown in a large pile of metal, Burned up.. Then half arsed buried in the ground. You know how they did it in the 60's. But to me it was priceless.. A memory from one of the men from my hometown who fought overseas, neglected by the family, and now homed in my small museum with a story behind it.

My point was just like the old surplus from back then. There was so much of it, nobody really cared... And today sometimes people still don;t care. They will find granny and grandpa's old truck full of memories, letters home, uniforms, medals... Some of then just chunk em out. Some put them on ebay to try and get some money. But they really just don't care for anything other than themselves.

The days of real army surplus are long gone like $50 mauser rifles, M1 Carbines and nickel beer.

This P-40 fighter was purchsed as surplus after the war. It was actually flown to Southern Oklahoma, landed in a field and placed in front of the school... Only later to be sold as scrap Metal. So a true WWII operational Fighter was sold for scrap metal... Just sickening.

There's a big one in Gonzales