Craftsman tools and candy counters
The last Sears store closes today
I’m watching news shows this morning and the ticker at the bottom of the screen mentions the last Sears store closes its doors today, Sunday, November 13, 2021.
Our local Sears store closed a couple of years ago and not just closed, but was lopped off of the mall. The joke in our family is, “Dude, Sears is g-o-n-e. Gone. Did you know that?” after my husband realized it long after the rest of us.
“Yeah, dad. It’s gone.”
“When did THAT happen?” he asks, incredulous.
“Been a while, dad,” could be any of our children answering, with the same nonchalance. It wasn’t a significant part of their lives like it was to us. Sure, as a family we browsed through the store when we used to walk the mall, but mainly it was a source of the quarterly kid photo session at the photography studio when they were preschoolers or a quick trip to Lands’ End for shorts.
I’m pondering all of this as I pull a Marshall Field’s brand shirt out of the dryer. It’s vintage, a classic check dress shirt. It was mine originally and our youngest finds it fun and now wears it. Marshall Field’s, of course, is gone as well. I touch the label and think about the shops and the brands that are now gone, but so much a part of growing up here in the Midwest. Weird. I feel like an old person, “remember when…”
As a Chicagoan, The Sears Tower will always be called that. I always fumble around the renaming as Willis Tower. I worked there in the nineties and love that building’s idiosyncrasies, although I admit that I don’t miss the windy, stormy days and being evacuated into the basement.
When I was seven, our basement stairway was wallpapered with the Sears catalog. My mother disassembled an actual catalog and wallpapered the stairway. No two pages alike. I remember teetering on a step or two trying to read the teeny descriptions of corsets, guns, shoes, and hats on ambered paper.
Sears will forever remind me of Craftsman tools and my dad. My dad was in the candy business. You’d think as a kid I would have eaten a lot of candy, but it wasn’t really allowed at home. Our garage was filled with candy samples for a customer visit, but it was off-limits to me. In the seventies, there were candy counters strategically placed in Sears. In return for my patience during Tool Buying, I could choose a small paper bag with Swedish Fish.
As a parent, I now understand how important those outings were for my dad. He could talk tools with other adults, compare sockets and wrenches and saw blades. I loved the tiers of bright candy trays pushed up to kid eye level. Retail merchandising at its finest. I can still close my eyes and smell the gooey sweet candy scent mixed with the oily metal smell of the tools around me. Sunday afternoons and Sears.
What’s your favorite Sears memory?
