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Philip Spiess
A Shopping Addendum to
DOWNTOWN DEPARTMENT STORES AT CHRISTMAS
I thought that I had covered what I wanted to cover in my “Department Stores” essay above, but I was focusing on the stores themselves, and I didn’t really mention the actual shopping! Now, I’m not intending to guess what all of you might have shopped for, much less bore you to tears by running through what sorts of things I used to shop for, but I am going to pass along some thoughts I have had on what has gradually become missing from the shopping we did in our younger days.
When you entered most stores on the ground level, the first thing that hit you (right in the nose, to be exact) was the ladies’ perfume department, overly fragrant with its offerings. As a young adult male with a girlfriend, I once stopped at one of these counters to investigate their wares for a possible purchase. Imagine my surprise when the young lady behind the counter sprayed some scent on the back of my hand so I could check out its aroma. The aroma stayed with me the rest of the day, despite my washing my hands with soap, with the result that the young lady I was dating that night semi-accused me of seeing some other young woman! (Whatever the case, whatever the sales pitch, one usual ended up buying – if buying at all – the original Kolnischwasser or “Chanel No. 5.”)
If you penetrated further into the interior of the store, most likely you next encountered the sort of men’s goods counter that Paul Simons describes that he worked at in his comments on my original essay: wallets, ties, and Brut cologne (also “Old Spice” and “English Leather”). Stylish and/or fold-up umbrellas and men’s gloves were apt to be at this counter also, as well as a once-significant item, now pretty much passe, the elegant gold or silver men’s cigarette lighter. At a different, but strictly men’s, counter would be a great array of hats (and, no, we’re not talking baseball caps!). This brings to mind a story that went around downtown for years: on the west side of Race Street, south of Shillito’s, at the northwest corner of either Sixth or Seventh Street, was an elegant men’s clothing store (I forget its name). Just inside the front door, parallel to Race Street, was a glass counter along the top of which ran a whole line of gentlemen’s hats. One day in the 1940s, so the story ran, a distinguished elderly gent, complete with furled umbrella and bristling white moustache, walked into the store and waited at this counter for a salesclerk. Two young clerks were actually behind the counter chatting with one another and laughing, and the elderly gentleman waited some time to catch their attention. Finally, in exasperation, he tapped loudly on the floor with his umbrella. A clerk turned and superciliously asked him, in a condescending tone, “May I help you?” “Yes!” the gentleman responded acerbically, and, laying his umbrella down across the counter, walked smartly to the front entrance, sweeping all of the hats before him onto the floor. He then turned to the clerk, and saying, most decisively, “You may pick all of those up for me!” he walked briskly out of the store.
I won’t attempt a further particular pathway through the store, as most stores differed beyond their front entrances, but I do want to mention a few specialized counters that maybe made it into the store branches in the suburban malls, but which disappeared over time. One was the candy counter, exclusively for purchasing candy, no other product (well, maybe some cookies). This counter was as fragrant as the ladies’ perfume department, but, to my youthful tastes, far more appreciated. The counter sold both boxed candies and those in loose bulk. Whitman’s, Russell Stover, and Dolly Varden candies were available in bulk, as were simpler fare, such as hard candies, chocolate-covered peanuts, raisins, and other fruits (such as cherries and pineapple), mints, fancy lollipops, butterscotch discs, cinnamon balls, root beer barrels, and black licorice (made locally by the John Mueller Licorice Company over on Freeman Avenue; you could smell the licorice being made a block away). If I was shopping with my grandmother, she would let me pick out a standard box-size worth of one or two types of candies; my choice was invariably Russell Stover’s chocolate-covered “honey-combs” (a hardened taffy-like candy) and chocolate-covered orange peel. One day, however (by this time I was in college), shopping in Shillito’s, I got a bag of cinnamon balls. Coming out of Shillito’s garage, I had barely started to suck on one when my grandmother hit the brakes, and the big ball went down and lodged in my throat. I was not about to swallow that big a piece of candy – I could not – but I was choking and turning red. I did the only thing I could think of: I stood on my head upside down in the car and bounced myself up and down; luckily, this shook loose the candy ball and I righted myself again, still alive.
A similar counter in many stores was the nuts counter (no, not the crazy counter; those might be found in any bargain sales basement); it was the counter that sold nuts in bulk, sometimes hot (as in the risque song), and its fragrance, like the candy counter, told you where it was and what it was selling. You could get, in bulk and served up in a bag, shelled and unshelled plain or salted peanuts, cashews, almonds, macadamia nuts, unshelled walnuts and pecans, shelled Brazil nuts and filberts – you name it. Such a counter even sold my favorite – Jordan Almonds, almonds covered with a hard, pastel-colored candy coating (so hard that I once broke a tooth eating one).
I could go on: there was the housewares department, where one could look at various new kitchen gadgets (some that had been featured at the “Home Shows” at the Cincinnati Zoo); there was the draperies department, where, as young kids my sister and I would play a sort of hide and seek among the hanging drapery fabrics in front of free-standing window frames. There was Pogue’s shoe department, where my sister and I got measured for our elementary school shoes by Mrs. Dalrymple, using a then-standard fluoroscope, an X-ray machine in which we loved to look at our feet in a green glow, but which was later banned out of a fear of too much radiation exposure. And in Shillito’s and Pogue’s were the book departments (later discontinued) that, as an older youth, took up much of my shopping time (this was before Don Dahmann and I had discovered “Acres of Books” over on Main Street). In Pogue’s, I purchased books of the “Hardy Boys” series and the “Tom Swift, Jr.” scientific series (Pogue's also carried the complete line of books in the Wizard of Oz series). At Shillito’s, I found a bargain and/or discontinued books section over in the mezzanine annex by the back door that let out toward Shillito’s garage; I managed to get such things as Great Moments in News Photography (1960; originally $4.95, marked down to 77 cents) there.
Well, I’ll stop here and let any of you with memories you’d like to share continue. But I’ll end with two department store horror stories from the early 1950s. (1) A lady, determined to commit suicide, went to the Observation Deck on the top of Carew Tower, climbed the surrounding wall, and leaped off – to fall only twelve feet, because Carew Tower, like most skyscrapers, has setbacks to let light into downtown streets, and she lighted on one which stuck out at least five feet from the deck above. She broke her leg and lay moaning there in the well of the setback for some time before someone found her and she was hauled up. (2) As another lady was exiting Pogue’s elevator at the 2nd floor, the brake failed and the elevator shot upward, decapitating the lady, whose head rolled into the Children’s Shoe Department [see mention thereof above]. That must have given the kiddies something to talk about at their school’s “Show & Tell”! Ba-da-da! That’s all, folks!
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