Here's one from England: back in the early 1950s in Aldershot ('Home of the British Army'), in a little side street that linked the two main shopping streets of the town, was a TINY place that my father called 'Jean Standing's', which was mysterious because the name painted on the fascia was E STANDING: it wasn't until I was about nine that I heard the name Eugene, and the mystery was solved. Gene Standing's model shop was a classic: there was hardly room for more than a couple of people in front of the counter, because the whole place was crammed with every kind of modelling merchandise you could imagine - aircraft and boat kits, a huge rack of balsa, another of dopes and enamels, shelves of accessories like wheels, props (including the only example I've ever seen of an 'Elmer' constant-speed feathering prop.) and, under the glass top of the counter, an array of English diesel engines, both aero and marine - ED, Mills, Amco, Elfin, Allbon, FROG - all diesels, of course, except the FROG 500.
There was a back room, and it was in there that second-hand engines would be test-run by prospective purchasers to see if they were worth buying. Enter that place on a Saturday afternoon, as I usually did, and you found it thick with diesel exhaust fumes - the shop may have been tiny, but you could hardly see across it, let alone breathe: and of course, when an engine was running, even a little Mills .75 - the most civilised model aero engine in the known universe - you couldn't make yourself heard, either. For an aeromodelling-mad kid in the '50s, it was Paradise, pure and simple.
All the best.
John