Nostalgiaville, USA, Kingdom City, Missouri

Somewhere over the rainbow, where tomorrow is another day, Nat King Cole and Dean Martin serenade customers as they shop for poodle skirts and saddle shoes. Inside an eye-catching pink and blue building, tin signs commemorating “I Love Lucy” and “The Andy Griffith Show” decorate the walls, and cars pull away with hula girls or fuzzy dice displayed in the front windshield.

Martha Doyle pulled into the parking lot of Nostalgiaville, USA, two blocks north of I-70 in Kingdom City, Missouri, and asked to borrow a phone book in 2000. She spoke with owners Ron and Judi Dunwoody, who offered her a phone book and a part-time job in the store. Now, after nine years, Doyle is a veteran with her own small collection.

Every inch of space inside the building is dedicated to nostalgic merchandise, mostly from the ’50s and ’60s. The store sells a bit of everything, from “Grease” costumes and drive-in movie speakers to Coca-Cola tin sign ads, “Three Stooges” license plates and “Wizard of Oz” bobble head dolls. Doyle said that she personally prefers Nostalgiaville’s John Wayne merchandise.

“I didn’t know I collected things, but my John Wayne collection is getting bigger,” Doyle said. “You can’t resist. The stuff is really neat. And of course, we get to see it when it comes in as we’re unpacking.”

The store even boasts a ’50s-style candy counter.

“During the summer, it’s well stocked with a lot of the individual candies, so you can buy 3-cent candies or nickel candies,” Doyle said.

Unlike many retail stores, Doyle said the staff at Nostalgiaville allows customers to look around and get a feel for the place and what’s on the shelves before asking if they need help finding anything. She said there is such a wide variety of items that very few customers spend less than half an hour in the building.

“Most of our customers, when they come in, they spend several hours,” Doyle said. “It takes a while to look at everything.”

Doyle said the store’s large selection and friendly atmosphere keeps customers coming back.

“A lot of stores may have a little bit of Betty Boop or a little bit of Elvis, whereas we try to get as much as we possibly can on each subject,” Doyle said. “We also keep it very family-oriented — you won’t see tobacco or alcohol here.”

Nostalgiaville also sells some merchandise online, but the in-store selection is larger. In addition, Doyle said those on the lookout for something in particular can enlist the help of Nostalgiaville’s staff.

“We have some people that I’ve called even two or three years later and said we finally found something, and they’ll be excited about it,” Doyle said.

Many of the store’s regular customers only visit once a year, Doyle said, planning their summer vacations around visiting Nostalgiaville and buying their Christmas presents.

The store’s busiest season is summer, and they begin receiving new merchandise in March of each year.

“During the summer, there are times when you can’t get up and down the aisles,” Doyle said. “We may have 30 or 40 people in here at one time.”

Some customers visit to reminisce about a simpler time, Doyle said, while others are not quite old enough to remember life before cell phones, much less life in the ’50s.

“I know one girl we had, I think she was about 12 at the time, walked in the front door and saw the ‘I Love Lucy’ and just started screaming and jumping up and down [because] she was so excited,” Doyle said.

Bonnie Bennett, who also works in the store, said she is surprised by the number of younger fans.

“When I first came to work here, of course I knew who Elvis Presley was because I remember seeing him on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ when they couldn’t show his legs, but it amazes me at the number of young people that follow Elvis and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles,” Bennett said.
Nostalgiaville is open between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. seven days a week and until8 p.m. during the summer.

Photos by David Mohl

http://www.nostalgicstuffusa.com/

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