All the Salvation Army Thrift Stores in metro St. Louis offer great bargains in used merchandise, but the Salvation Army Family Store in Florissant is family-size! Here you can find everything from 1950s blond bedroom suites to Moolah Shriner mugs, and the acreage of secondhand clothing is color-coded in a most artistic array. We love the bric-a-brac section, because the pricers here don't even attempt to distinguish "collectible" from "crapola." A glass Pyrex mixing bowl spangled with a rare '60s motif costs the same as a plastic no-name mixing bowl decorated only with dog gnaw. But this is the best part: The place is surrounded by ranch houses, each with a sewing machine tucked into a corner of the basement rec room. Before prom night, the neighborhood whirs with the rush of pressure foot over taffeta. But the children graduate, the eyesight fades, the knuckles gnarl — that's when it's time to retire the needle and donate one's stock of now-vintage fabric to charity, a.k.a. the nearby Salvation Army Family Store. Lucky us!