Great thoughts and preserving our heritage. I love the old clapboard buildings with the beat up screen door that used to serve as quick stops or gas stations. There are still a few on the big tourist roads around here. Also Mom and Pop stores. You'd go into a dark, dusty plumbing supply place and ask the old guy if he had one of these, and he'd rummage around the drawers or the shelves and come up with one. Corner drugstores with lunch counters. The pool hall with the great food (sausage dogs were my favorite. The pool hall moved to a building that didn't have room for pool anymore, but it was still called the pool hall and still had great food and the ladies that ran the place were 'local color' and you didn't even have to pay for the entertainment which was always plenty interesting.
There was a restaurant just a little ways from our high school that was run by the Aunt of one of my friends.
'Barrineau's', or just 'Barry's' if you were from around here. I could go on and on.