Who else misses department stores? I certainly do. I’m talking about real department stores, the ones divided up into, yep, departments such as Better Dresses, Sporting Goods and Footwear.
There is a vast difference between department stores of yesteryear and the massive everything-under-one-roof big-box stores we have today. Walk into a Walmart anywhere in the world and you’ll most likely be able to find the shampoo aisle because it’s in the same location in all Walmarts. It wasn’t like that in department stores. Each store was a little different with its own personality.
I especially miss Sears. Once upon a time Sears was just about the only game in town with slogans like: Where America Shops. The Good Life at a Great Price. Sears — Where Else?
Where else, indeed? Sears was THE place to buy new school shoes, a washing machine or a bag of chocolate cream stars. Whenever my mom announced she was headed for Sears, it was a given that all her offspring were tagging along. Sears really was where America shopped until all of the sudden, we didn’t. I remember a television ad for Sears in its final years that portrayed two women looking for a parking place in a crowded mall. “Park at Sears,” one of them suggested. “There’s always parking at Sears.” That ad campaign fell under the “sad but true” category.
One of the best things about Sears was the fact there were no surprises. Sears could have also used “what you see is what you get” as a slogan and it would have been the truth. Perhaps the clothing wasn’t the chicest, and maybe the shoes were a bit on the utilitarian side, but everything sure was made well.
There were other wonderful department stores in the good old days, too. Most cities had their own “nicer” department stores. For me it was Marshall Field’s, a mecca to materialism if ever there was one.
The flagship store for Field’s took up an entire city block in downtown Chicago. This memory will show my age more clearly than a bone-density test, but I can recall when it was possible to spend an entire day at Marshall Field’s with only 10 dollars in your pocket. Ten bucks covered the train ride into the city, lunch and all the free perfume samples you could grab.
It wasn’t only the big cities that had their own department stores. Most towns had a smaller version where you could pick up a pin for your mom for her birthday or a tie for your dad. Sadly, those too have vanished over time.
This comment will again show my age, but kids today don’t know what they’re missing. Sure, online shopping is more convenient than doing it in person and you can shop whenever, even at 2 a.m. It might also be slightly more economical since impulse buys can be avoided. But what about the experiences we’re swapping out for convenience?
No more candy counters. No more toy departments. No more shoe salesmen measuring our feet in those clunky metal devices that always shamed me because my left foot was a full half size bigger than my right. Now that those shopping experiences are nothing but memories.
It occurs to me that shopping has in some ways come full circle. Sears started out as a mail-order catalog and families pored over those catalogs as they dreamed about what they’d buy if they could get anything. In a way, online shopping is quite similar. You search for what you want, order it and wait for it to arrive, just like the families of yore. While it’s fun waiting for something to come in the mail, it just doesn’t have the same panache as shopping in person.
Thinking about those long ago shopping trips makes me wonder what my kids will be nostalgic about someday. Somehow I can’t imagine it will be fond memories of scrolling through Amazon at 2 in the morning.
Nell Musolf is a freelance writer based in Mankato. She can be reached at nmusolf@gmail.com.