Fond memories of the Sears catalogue
As Sears restructures, closing dozens of stores and leaving thousands of its workers facing an uncertain future, I would like to pay tribute to the company’s longstanding and dedicated employees.
Thinking of Sears brings back fond memories of the day a huge catalogue appeared outside our apartment door. It had Christmas Wish Book written across it, with a smiling Santa on the cover inviting me to peer inside and make my dreams come true. I was 10 years old and completely smitten.
I brought this book inside — it seemingly weighed more than I did — and was immediately mesmerized by its numerous glossy pages, endless pages of toys. I circled the ones I wanted and, like the catalogue dictated, I wished for them.
My mom perused it next and found a few things she desired. With a simple phone call, made back then with an actual dial-up phone, my mom explained in her Eastern European broken English what size bra she needed.
But what I did glean was that whoever was on the other end of that phone, was patiently guiding my mom to a universe of unparalleled shopping possibilities and an unprecedented collection of corduroy and velvet purchased ensembles.
A half hour later, my mom looked enormously pleased with herself. Her order would be delivered COD — cash on delivery — at our local post office.
The Sears catalogue followed us no matter where we moved. Like an old friend ready to greet us, there it was on our stoop or waiting for us to be picked up from our mail box. It arrived all shiny and perky and beckoning us to peek inside and see what was new for the upcoming season.
My mom would retire early for the evening and take her catalogue with her, a comfort of sorts, or, as the years went on, more like a much needed distraction from whatever new aches were developing.
By the time I was in my 40s and my mom was nearing her 80s, I was already sharing many a shopping day with her in the actual brick and mortar Sears, the one at Fairview, to be exact. Walking through the whole mall would be too tiring for her, so our time was spent solely at Sears. This particular one offered up the best kind of full service to my then-ailing mom. We always came in from the outside ground floor entrance, and to our left was the Sears café — a place of respite both before we embarked on our shopping spree and a place of repose following our retail damage, a place to compare our findings over a cup of tea and muffins. She felt right at home among the makeshift weathered plush arm chairs.
I now cherish and long for those times, when we just sat at that café and she secondguessed whether to go back and exchange her neon red and pink floral blouse for the apple green one, either able to ignite a vertigo attack. For me, those were the best of times and of Sears days! Wendy Reichental is an administrative co-ordinator at McGill University. She lives in Dollard-des-Ormeaux.