Monday Meanderings - 11.19.2018

The decline and fall of Sears Roebuck and company has been a long time in the making. Store closings, product lines sold off, strange business alliances and stranger business decisions. The company is officially in bankruptcy, with little chance of coming out. There are no more Sears stores in Austin.

Frankly, I have not shopped at Sears for a number of years. Evidently I am not alone. Over the years, though, Sears played a significant role in the commerce of my life, beginning with those wonderful catalogues. I doubt if my grandchildren can conceive of receiving a 300+ page catalog in the mail and referring to it for the essentials needed for almost every aspect of your life; appliances, furnishings, clothing and auto.

The big book was more than just a way to order what you needed - it was an education. Helpful notes about how to order, what to choose, tools you would need, parts descriptions. And over the years the spectrum of goods offered was staggering - from autos to houses, and anything else one might want.

And the Christmas Wish book. How many hours were spent poring over the pages, making and re-making the Christmas list?

I was a Sears customer long before I married - tires, batteries, dorm hot plates and the such. Barb and I bought our bedroom suite from Sears when we moved into our first apartment. We still have it. We bought refrigerators, washers and dryers over the years. Mattresses for the bed, clothing for our kids, tires and batteries for the car. Tools and hardware for the house, the treadmill we still (occasionally) walk on, the chest freezer presently out in the bonus room.

So why did we stop shopping at Sears? All of the factors that eventually brought it down. High prices, diminishing product lines, heavy competition - but mostly it was unprofessional sales staff, and poor customer service. The Home Depot on the other end of the shopping center was always "no problem." Sears always seemed to say "we can't do that."

So farewell Sears. We will miss the old you.

Monday Meanderings - 11.12.2018

Watching the election unfold this week reminded me of my small contribution to the process - way, way back when I was a paperboy in Breckenridge Texas.

Whenever a major election took place, the election headquarters for Stephens County was in the County Courthouse, fittingly enough. But the newspaper office - several blocks away - had the teletype machines and connections to the State headquarters in Austin.

So on election nights, the Breckenridge American called in all the paperboys and we couriered the latest counts from the courthouse to the paper office, and carried State news to the folks in the courthouse. It was a high-priority, don't-stop-for-anything process, and we competed fiercely for the shortest elapsed time covering the distance, skidding our bikes right up to the paper office door, hopping off to hand the latest count (which was tabulated by court-house staff hand counting paper ballots). Crowds would gather on the street in front of the paper office to see the numbers change on the blackboard (borrowed from the high school) which was positioned in front of the building.

Inside, the counts would get forwarded electronically (if the teletype line was up, which was not always guaranteed) to Austin. And sometimes, the publisher just picked up the phone and called Austin. It was a lot faster. And state-wide results would come back the same way, and the available paper boy would take this information to the courthouse - at a much more leisurely rate - and hang around until they had counted another batch of local ballots.

In Stephens County, it didn't take long to count the ballots. Breckenridge was, and still is, the only incorporated town in the county, and the folks in communities like Caddo, Gunsight and Necessity came into town to vote, if they cared. So it the excitement generally ended early, which is okay, because it was a school night.

The one exception to that was the year Jack Cox, a local boy who had gone off to Houston to be in the oil business ran against Price Daniel for governor of Texas. Everyone hung around for a while to see how that came out state-wide. I was in college by then, but came back to town with my journalism-major roommate to watch democracy in action. Jack lost handily, and we went off to the Dairy Delight to check out the girls. So much for politics.

Monday Meanderings -

Happy Election Day eve - or as I prefer to call it - The National IQ Test. Choose wisely.

Where did all the pecans go? Earlier this year the branches were laden and drooping - so much so, I was concerned about limbs breaking, as they are want to do. But the season is drawing to a close and the total crop is but a small grocery sack full at this point. Of course, the Vietnamese lady has gathered some, but I've been pretty proactive with the gathering.

Saw the other day that the lady who invented the green bean casserole passed away.  I was astounded to learn that that dish was invented in the Campbell Soup test kitchen. I thought it was part of the Creation Story in Genesis. You know, "Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, and whip up some green bean casserole to go with those tasty chickens we created the other day." Really. Who knew?

Which makes me think of church pot-lucks, which are largely a thing of the past. Not when I was growing up, though. I have especially fond memories of the church ladies in Breckenridge who would gather regularly for quilting bees - though I'm not sure they used that term. But the quilts (in their frames) were suspended from the ceiling in a couple of the class rooms in the church basement, and they would gather to quilt, and visit, and eat lunch together.

The Junior High was just a few blocks down the hill, and on those days I would walk up for my share of chicken and green bean casserole, announcing my presence with a hearty, "Hello, you lucky people."

I don't know what they did with the quilts. Gave them to needy people, I guess. Sent them to missionaries. Maybe with left-over green bean casserole.