Remembrance of Stores Past

 

This week was full of more disappearances. The New York Times headline, April 23, 2023 read: ”Bed Bath & Beyond Files for Bankruptcy.”  The alliteratively-named store that was a standby source for hangers and hot gloves, tablecloths and towels, gadgets and gizmos was closing its doors at all 300 plus locations. The ubiquitous 20% off coupons that piled up in my car door pocket, ready for the purchase of whatever I needed plus some things I probably didn’t, were voided and thrown into recycling. I was saddened to read about the demise of the much-visited store. I closed the newspaper and headed out to another much-visited store, where I needed additional kneadable erasers and 6B pencils for my art class.

I pulled into the parking lot of my local Michaels, my most convenient art supply store. There, painters, not the artistic kind, were obliterating the store logo with a thick layer of white paint.  Through the display windows, an emptied store loomed. I sat in my car, mouth hanging open, to recover from the surprise. No warning. Was it just this store? All the stores? There was nowhere nearby to purchase my art supplies. I pulled out of the empty parking lot, feeling abandoned. Another store gone. Was my neighborhood becoming a retail desert?

I drove off frustrated. Made my usual left from the LIE, down Main Street. As I slowed to stop for a red light, I received another surprise. The old, local Main Street Movie theater was shuttered. No more discount movie-going there. Another source of comfort and entertainment eliminated.

Three stores in one day! The familiar and dependable, gone, almost like a departed friend. The loss recalled other retail establishments from my childhood and young adulthood that disappeared. And so, here, a remembrance of stores past . . .

*****

In 1970, as a newly-fledged college graduate, working in the Big City, for the first time, I suddenly had the income to choose the gems of retail that would help define who I was becoming and who I was to become. Miniskirts and hotpants versus silks and tweeds. Maybe a dash of this and a swag of that. Near my place of employment, I was drawn to the goods in the Plymouth Shop and recognized that they were a little more exciting than the Lower East Side and Macy’s brands I was used to buying. Then, a little further south, I could enter the old-world floors of B. Altman and feel the hush and splendor of the palatial place. So quiet, so civilized. Politeness edging toward the stodgy since 1906. I loved it there. I was greeted respectfully, even though I was just a novice purchaser. I slid my inexperienced hand over the soft down of cashmere and the solid seams of tailored suits, none of which I could afford. At both these stores I learned how to establish my style and wait for a sale.

When Plymouth Shops and then B. Altman went out of business in the 1980’s, I felt as if a familiar piece of me had fallen into an abyss. These were knowable, reliable, stable places, in the way a safe childhood home can be. It was time to reluctantly move on to other options.

 I felt even sadder when Alexander’s closed. It may not have been as “classic” as B. Altman, but my family had always shopped there-- first in The Bronx, and then in Queens and Manhattan.  My grandmother bought a silk scarf for me there. Ballerinas pranced along the edges, and my five-year-old self almost leapt for joy. My face conjures a gaze of pleasure and love in those grandmotherly eyes that shone back to my own, as she murmured “Wear it in good health, Mamashayna.” The scarf, though no longer worn, is a beloved artifact in my ever-growing scarf drawer.

For decades, Alexander’s was also the place my grandmother bought stockings for my mother and herself. It didn’t matter that my mother was a working woman in her fifties. The first time my mother bought a pair of stockings after my grandmother’s death, I noticed her eyes momentarily well up with tears.  The purchase of my own much-anticipated first pair of stockings produced a totally different emotion. It signaled part of my passage from young girl to teenager. This was pre-pantyhose when a pair of stockings was still a “pair.” And so, a store and its stockings became part of our intergenerational story.

When I was a twenty-something “working girl” (as they called us then), Alexander’s is where I and a newly-made pal from a few floors up shopped for my first set of mugs and other necessities to set up my apartment. Two of the original cups are still in my kitchen cabinet, well-used, unchipped, and standing proud amongst all the other blue mugs I have bought since-- a testament to my first forays into adult living, as well as the durability of a 45-year-old friendship.

Marsha