When I was a kid, growing up in the 1960s, my parents would regularly take me to three major department stores: Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penny. We shopped in the stores, but my parents would also order items from the catalogues that we would go pick up in the stores. Department store shopping and catalogue shopping were both part of my normal life.
There were also Hanny’s and Korricks in downtown Phoenix (back when the downtown was still a shopping destination), as well as Diamond’s, Goldwater’s, and Switzer’s (at Park Central, then later Chris-Town).
As I got older, I made a point of shopping in (well, at least walking around) some of the great department stores along the west coast. There was I. Magnin, Macy’s and Neiman Marcus (San Francisco), Bullocks Wilshire and May Company (Los Angeles) and I. Magnin (Santa Barbara). Little did I know that, by the time I am writing this, nearly all of those great stores would be history. So many of the major department stores have closed or are closing owing to stiff online competition. I can’t remember the last time I was actually inside a major department store. Like so many others, I do a lot of my shopping electronically; even though I miss the big department stores and their catalogues. (I had a job at the Broadway Department Store in Chris-Town Mall in 1977-1978.)
Recently, becoming nostalgic for that department store shopping experience, I bought a vintage Montgomery Ward catalogue from 1965. This was not the year I was born; rather, the year I probably would have started to become cognizant of the purchase of consumer goods like food, clothing and entertainment items.
I hate to use a tired cliche, but it really was like a trip down memory lane. The dresses! The shoes! The televisions! So many things similar to (if not exactly) things in my house growing up.
Sure, online shopping can really be convenient and sometimes less expensive; but I miss the experience of going to nice department stores just to walk around.
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