well its only been fifteen to twenty years ago. But for youngins it's the old days.

It was the days of the K-Marts in our area. I hung around a bunch of trout fishermen. We had two stores in our county, and they had to have a buyer who fished. Because for a small department, he certainly knew how to stock items. We had a good assortment of hooks, lead weights, line and other items. One store really specialized. I can still remember seeing Joe with his brand new float tube. I was still wade fishing at the time and I admired his purchase. It knocked me over where he got it and at more than half the price. Went directly to the store, after fishing, and bought my first float tube.
It was imported but perfectly good. In fact, it had an inner tube that indicated the size of the truck tube. To this day, I never bought a new float tube. I just bought inner tubes from companies that sold truck tires and tubes.

lordy, did those stores save me money, while they still existed.