On Thursday, I did my patriotic duty by helping support a valued yet endangered American institution.

Yes, I shopped at a Kmart.

Specifically, I obtained the Apex AD-3201, described by several websites as the best cheap DVD player currently available. It plays DVD movies, audio CDs, even MP3 audio files from CD/Rs. And with the right adjustments, it can even allegedly do things some much costlier players can’t.

The AD-3201 wasn’t out in the traditional back-wall TV/video display area (which had ample empty shelf slots). I had to hunt around to find a boxed unit, which I successfully did. I tried to reassure the clerk that the chain’s current crisis could indeed be nonfatal, as had the bankruptcy reorganization of the Bon Marche’s parent chain. She seemed insufficiently encouraged.

A leisurely stroll through the massive space revealed why she might have felt a bit down. About half the departments had at least some empty or near-empty shelves. Strolling customers were quite sparse (even for a recessionary January weeknight). Other display sections looked like they hadn’t been straightened up all day. Many floor tiles looked scuffy. Much of the apparel merchandise still looked thin and shoddy.

Stock clerks chatted aloud to one another, comparing the number of work hours they’d just had reduced. At the front, the head checkout clerk was dressing down her subordinates, demanding to know which one had been keeping an opened bag of potato chips at her checkstand.

The cheery signs and banners seemed an exercise in desperate, manic positivity. The whole place gave me flashbacks to the last six months of Frederick & Nelson.

Granted, the 130th & Aurora unit is one of Kmart’s oldest buildings, acquired in the early ’70s from the even cheaper old White Front chain. The other Seattle Kmart, in West Seattle’s lost valley of Delridge, is a lot nicer looking on the inside. But if the chain’s gonna mount any kind of serious comeback, it’ll have to get serious about making them inviting, fun places again.