The news that the next chapter in the Sears Wish Book is titled “11” strikes a somber chord with me. Sears (or Sears-Roebuck as we called it back when) may be on the way out. While they have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in yet another attempt to stay afloat and relevant in today’s ocean of retail, many in the world of high finance are advising Sears to just go ahead and liquidate.
I am not smart enough or have enough information to give any useful analysis of how Sears got into such a situation. And I certainly don't have any insight as to what they should do next. What I do know is their catalog at Christmas—the Wish Book—was a must read for me and my brother. We would pour over it for hours. Pages were dog eared and items were circled. The smell of the paper and ink they used was as much a part of the season as the fragrance of evergreens and cookies being baked. After reading some social media posts on the subject, it appears the Maine brothers weren’t the only ones spending time with one of the finest retail publications in history.
When asked to share their memories of what was America’s number one retailer until 1989, almost everyone included a comment about the Wish Book. In fact, one person said they kept it on the coffee table next to the family Bible. One book for spiritual comfort and the other for creature comfort, I suppose. It makes sense since the Sears catalog in general was once called America’s Retail Bible.
The Wish Book was better than any treasure map could ever hope. A treasure map only tells you where to find the booty. The Wish Book told you what was in the chest and where to find it. Even better, you didn’t have to lift a shovel. Just fill out a form, drop it in the mail, and they would bring the treasure to you. Eat your heart out Black Beard!
And what treasures! Toys galore and more than one child could imagine. There were Tonkas, Lionel trains, bikes and other great must-haves for boys…even walkie-talkies. I’m sure there were dolls and such in there for girls, but macho eight-year-old boys are blind to such fare. It was a waste of Wish Book space in our opinion. Strangely enough, we didn’t seem to feel the same way about the women’s underwear section. It had a certain appeal that we just couldn’t fathom at the time.
But Sears was more than the Wish Book and Christmas. It was an everything, every day store. We bought just about everything there: Husky jeans for back to school, mowers, appliances, and tools. If they didn’t have it in stock, you just walked back to Customer Service and ordered it.
You could say Sears started as a fluke. It seems young Richard Warren Sears was working at a railway station when a jeweler received a shipment of watches he really didn’t want. Sears bought them for a song and then sold them to his co-workers for a profit. Soon thereafter he started a mail order watch business.
That was in 1886. Watch repairman Alvah Roebuck teamed up with Sears at this point. Three years later they sold the business. But by 1892 they were at it again with another mail order venture and from there the Sears catalog was born. They sold nearly everything you could think of including houses you built from a kit (I can just imagine the instruction books on those). The retail stores would come later.
I used to love going to the Sears at Sherwood Plaza in Gainesville. The new bikes would be lined up all shiny and smelling of fresh rubber tires. I always thought that would make a great body splash: Ode de Bike. Obviously a guy thing.
My Parents always bought their appliances from Sears. In those days you didn’t refer to an appliance by its function (washing machine, dryer, fridge), you called it by brand name. In my house it was always “put your clothes in the Kenmore”, “grab a Coke from the Kenmore”. We were brand proud and rightfully so. Those things were hard to kill.
Kenmore didn’t mean much to me until Lady Kate and I got married and found ourselves in need of a washer and dryer. Off to Sears, right? Wrong. We were newly married which is synonym for “broke”. That’s where my in-laws lent a hand (one of several over the decades of our marriage). They donated their old machines. We used them for at least another ten years. Certain that we had gotten their money’s worth, we went to Sears and bought a high capacity Kenmore washer and matching dryer. We still use them today. They work just as well now as the day they were delivered nearly twenty years ago.
I can’t say the Craftsman lawnmower my dad bought in the sixties fared as well, although through no fault of Sears. It was a beauty, as lawnmowers go. It had a light blue mowing deck, easy pull start, and was self-propelled. As someone who had grown up plowing with a mule and harvesting cotton and tobacco by hand, I’m sure my father saw owning such a masterpiece that pulled itself around the yard as the definition of having “arrived”. It certainly did make mowing our fifty-acre piece of America easier. (Okay it was just under an acre but when you’re 10 perspective has yet to develop.) The joy came to a sudden halt when my brother let it run out of oil. It is hard to cut grass with a power mower when the motor has seized no matter how fast you push it.
Perhaps the Sears purchase that had the biggest impact on my youth (aside from having clean clothes and a trim lawn) was the camper my father bought via the Sears catalog. The day we drove to Atlanta to pick it up at the warehouse was one to remember. It was another triumph for a man who grew up in a South Georgia farm house with next to nothing including indoor plumbing. He had worked hard to afford an extravagant purchase that would allow he and his family to leave the confines of an air conditioned home with 2 and a half bathrooms to live in the woods without central anything and enjoy the privilege of walking a half mile to use a bathhouse shared by 30 other "successful" people. Sometimes capitalism takes on some interesting twists.
I have to hand it to Dad, our Sears pop-up was huge. It had really big beds and he even sprang for the “Add-a-Room” feature. This was a canvas room (a big tent) that you zipped onto the front of the camper. It became our kitchen on the many camping trips we made in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. I loved those trips even if I had to share a bed with my brother.
Not all was calm on those trips. The the camper had “SEARS” in big letters on the back. It was basically a rolling billboard for Sears. That is until one particular trip during which my brother put a big sticker over the first “S”. My father was none too pleased when, while setting up camp for the night, he discovered he’d just driven for six hours with the word “EARS” on the back of his rolling trophy.
What happens next in the Sears story is unclear. They are closing more stores, though thankfully none in Georgia. Hopefully they can correct their course and stay afloat. I guess that’s up to the courts, the banks, and most of all we the consumers.
In a related note, I see that Amazon, the big online retailer that keeps the delivery folks hopping, is opening physical store fronts.
Hmmmm….That sounds hauntingly familiar.
