Long time readers will recall that I have a very personal relationship with J.C. Penney–the store, and the man. My attachment to the store began before I was born, and continued until we broke up after a very long and sad decline. “It’s not me, it’s you,” was how I finally ended it.

My attachment to the man, James Cash Penney, son of a preacher, began with my dad, a Penneyman for over 40 years.

So it should come as no surprise that what I wanted to see most on our recent journey back in time was The Store–the Penney’s where Dad was store manager for about seven years. It was his second store as manager. His first was slated to be closed within a year and they gave it to him to get his feet wet. This one was the first he could really manage.

I’d found the address. We drove into town, parked the car (which had now come to understand that I was in charge) gathered up the camera and set out. The building is a coffeehouse now; it’s the yellow one. The exterior has changed a bit–there used to be an awning–though if I’d see the backdoor first, I’d have recognized it immediately.

Wouldn’t you know the coffeehouse was closed on Tuesdays? I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t getting up in the middle of the night, driving to the airport, getting patted down like a criminal because my jeans have and extra set of buttons on the waistband, navigating ATL, dealing with the Hertz fiasco at PIT, driving in the rain through the real mountains in a car that thought it knew more than I did, waking up to snow, and so forth, only to be turned away by a “Tuesday Closed” sign. So I did what any self-respecting country mouse would do. I banged on the door. The older gentleman who was vacuuming eventually heard us. I told him my story, “This used to be a Penney’s store…” and he welcomed us in to wander around and take photos.

He was a very nice guy. Left us alone for a while and then rejoined us. He knew a lot about the town and its history. He recognized many of the names I mentioned. Told us the Symphony still exists. He seemed to enjoy learning more about what the building had once been–he even took us to the basement!

The long view, from just inside the double front doors. The interior has changed. I don’t recall the walls being brick, they were probably horse-hair plaster. But still the bone are all there. The main cash register was located about halfway between the front door and the staircase.

This was the shoe department. Ahh. indulge me. Each shoebox had a two-part ticket on its end. In addition to size &c., each ticket contained the subdivision and lot number of the individual item. The subdivision is a 3-digit number that classifies (still does, just checked) all of the merchandise in a store into a category. The first digit is the roughest– “0” is shoes. Second breaks it down, if I recall “1” was men’s, “2” women’s, and so forth. Third would be the most refined classification, e.g., casual, dress, athletic.

The lot number is a 4-digit number than identifies a particular item. There’s of course a scheme to lot-numbering which for shoes I can no longer remember. (252 used to be the subdivision for women’s tops. Lot numbers that began with some digit would identify long sleeve vs short sleeve, solid vs print, and so on.) Anyway, to get back to the memory, when a pair of shoes was sold, half the ticket stayed on the box (for return info) and the other half was dropped into a box. I think there were a couple of different boxes, so sorting was begun in the store, but every Saturday evening Dad would bring the boxes home, and on Sunday, I’d sit at the dining room table and sort through the tickets, subdivision by subdivision, lot number by lot number.

You kids with computers have it so easy.

After the sorting, the number of weekly sales for each shoe style (and everything else in the store for that matter) would be recorded on its page in a notebook (one per subdivision). This was the method for both being able to keep basic items (little black pumps) in stock, and for knowing which new and fashionable items were “checking out,” i.e., selling quickly. You want to be able to spot these items as soon as you can so that you can reorder them and maximize their sales potential.

Shoes are an especially difficult category to keep track of. With clothing or home furnishings, you have racks or tables of merchandise. If you put a dozen l/s tie dye hoodies on a rack on Monday and the arm of the rack is more than half empty on Saturday, you’ve got a checkout! If you always want to have on hand 18 pale blue bath towels, all you have to do is count how many are folded on the table on the sales floor, and how many are on the shelf in the stockroom. But shoes…. I have never in my life ever been in a shoe stockroom with good lighting. Never.

I want to say that work clothes and home furnishings were on the balcony but I am not certain of that. Remember work clothes? Work clothes had its own set of subdivisions. Wait. Some may not know what work clothes are. (Bet you don’t know about house dresses either!) If you’ve made it this far you deserve to know. (OMG I was right! Subdivisions starting with 5.) There were three color choices: grey, olive drab, and dark blue. Long and short sleeve shirts, trousers, zip up jackets. No shorts. Men did not wear shorts to work. Wait! Also those one-piece work suits. The sort you might pull up over your good clothes if you had something grimy to do like change your car tire.

Work clothes were a staple group long ago. I managed a work clothes department in the store I trained in. The lowest markups in the store–high 30-low 40%. The only thing I ever saw with lower mark ups (cost to retail ratio) were the microwave ovens when they were booming thing back in the… well, before Daughter C was in kindergarten. But here’s the thing. Your work clothes department had to be kept well but tightly stocked. The Mrs. does the laundry and sees that one of you five work shirts is getting a hole in the elbow. Next time she’s in town she looks for a size 15 1/2, 33″ sleeve olive drab work shirt. If you’re out, she may go up to the second floor to see what’s new. Or not. If you’re out the next week, she’s taking her business elsewhere. Not like the competition doesn’t carry work clothes.

Dad’s office would have been behind the wall in the back, with the office ladies’ space being in the left hand corner.

This is where our host–the nice gentleman–rejoined us. He arrived via the elevator. Used to be the only store in town with one.

The basement brought back memories as well.

This is the stairway leading from the basement to the first floor. Who remembers the Wish Book? The Christmas catalog. Sometime around Two Big Days–which in a saner time was what the “Black Friday” weekend, not counting Sunday because stores were closed on Sundays, was called–they set up a counter and register in the basement at the bottom of the stairs. Overflow catalog orders where shelved in the stockroom behind, and customers would go down there to pick up their orders.

There was also a gift wrapping station. I learned from the catalog ladies how to properly deal with wrapping and corners.

I want to say the windows where the mannequins lived were larger and offered a bigger look into them, but I’m not certain. They weren’t open as they are now, but there’s still a step up, and the lighting looks right. Over on the right hand side–the space that looks sort of closed off–was where the ad and display lady would have had her office. Back then newspaper advertisements were locally made. The core “branding” and national events (e.g., semi-annual white sales) all had templates that came from the corporate or regional offices. But the ads for what was on sale, marked down, newly arrived and such were all put together in store. There was a printing press of sorts, and the ad lady would build the ad and then get it to the newspaper.

Which brings me to one final point I want to emphasize. Back in these days, and continuing for quite a while–I’d say until the mid-90s or so–the vast majority of what went on in a Penney’s store was determined locally. With the store manager’s approval, and almost always with the input of the men or women who’d worked in the department for years and years, the department managers had control over 80% of the merchandise assortment. Sure the regional and corporate buyers chose the items that would be available, but it was a local decision whether or not you wanted to have a swimwear shop in your store in December. If your community went to church on Sunday, but the folks in the nearby city didn’t, being closed was a local choice.

I feel as if I have hammered away on this point before. Sorry.

Thus concludes our tour of my long term memories. Thanks for sticking with me! And yes. I am glad we went.