Ghostly reminders

Sign for a defunct clothing store in Salem, Mass. 

— Photo by Fletcher6 

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary, in GoLocal24.com.

Boston’s WBUR had a lovely piece on “ghost signs’’ – those fading identifiers on old brick walls of  mostly long-departed companies and industries, large and small. They serve as a reminder of capitalism’s “creative destruction,’’ and of how New England was once a manufacturing and retailing marvel. (All those long-gone local department stores.) Being of a certain age myself, I remember some of these sorts of old enterprises in their final years; indeed I worked for a couple of them in summer jobs.