Sears store memories store well
With Sears in bankruptcy, and deep in our collective memory, the wake goes on.
Nelda Lewis, of Chandler, tipped me to the Sears story of all Oklahoma Sears stories, and I’m a little embarrassed not to have already known about it. The Sears that was in Temple, in Cotton County, was one for the history books.
Apparently, Temple, with a population of about 1,200 at the time, was the smallest town to ever have a Sears store. And what a store it was.
It started before Sears, though, with the B&O Cash Store, in a stone building filling a full city block, just before statehood. Harold W. Powell tells about it in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture:
“The B&O Cash Store, ‘Wonder Store for the Giant of all Small Town Merchandising Successes,’ made Temple stand out in southern Oklahoma,” Powell wrote. “Bob and Otho Mooney built the business with thirteen hundred dollars of borrowed capital beginning in 1906. By 1922 they drew trade from a 150-mile radius. The store was a unique business built primarily on farm trade but with an international mailorder clientele. It had fiftyseven departments.”
And then:
“In 1929 Sears, Roebuck and Company bought the store, which it operated until the late 1950s. Sears donated the building to the town. From 1957 to 1989 Walter A. Yeilding, local clothing store owner, arranged for Haggar Apparel Company to lease the building under the name Temple Manufacturing Company. The company employed three hundred.”
That’s where my slight embarrassment comes in: 1989. I took a job starting that Jan. 3 as a city police reporter at the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas. By the end of the year, I’d moved to the regional news desk, which covered Temple, 45 miles northeast. I was in Temple, and all over Cotton County, more than a few times through the 1990s.
Losing Haggar was a huge blow for the town of 1,200 or
so (now fewer than 1,000). That I remember. It was so huge, I guess, that neither Sears nor the B&O Cash Store ever came up, at least as far as I remember.
The B&O was an incredible place, selling everything anyone would need “from birth to death.” Here’s more, from the Temple Museum Association Web page, www.angelfire.com/ok5/museumtemple/bocash. html.
“‘We had preachers to help marry the living or to help bury the dead,’ co-founder Otho Mooney once said.
“The B&O was opened in 1906 by brothers Bob and Otho Mooney, who began with $1,300 and 200 square feet of floor space. By 1923, the store took up an entire block with 40,000 square feet. It grossed $1.5 million that year.
“Billed ‘the biggest country store in the world,’ the B&O employed a preacher, an undertaker, a doctor, a pharmacist and a milliner among 100 regular employees. The store hired another 100 people during turkey and pecan season.
“The Mooneys carried produce, hardware, farm equipment, caskets, candy, furniture, clothing and lumber. They repaired watches, ordered cars and conducted regular auctions. The store bought poultry, grain, pecans and cream from local farmers and shipped it all over the United States in railroad cars.”
After Sears bought it, the store was known as Sears B&O until it closed in 1954, yielding to the Sears and larger market in Lawton, 35 miles north.
Who knew? Now you know, and I do, thanks to Nelda Lewis in Chandler. Thank you!
Here’s one more Sears story, from Kathy Morgan in Oklahoma City:
“Sears! What wonderful memories. In 1958, the huge multilevel Sears, with 2,000 parking places and 50 departments, was built at 21st and Yale in Tulsa. I was 12 years old and lived a mile away.
“It was a family activity to shop there. My Easter outfits were no longer homemade, but were bought from Sears. The candy counter was so big that I felt dwarfed when standing in front of it. They had the best chocolate peanut clusters ever.
“There was not much that my Dad, a mechanic at American Airlines, could not fix. He bought many, many a tool from Sears. Our appliances and furniture came from there.
“And oh, the warranties! Dad never fretted if something broke or did not work right. He knew that Sears would take care of him. At this very moment, my house has Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools.
“The closing of Sears is like losing a good friend.”
Yes, it is. Thanks, Kathy, and to all who wrote in.