I never bought shoes
from “Knight’s” store downtown Sanford:
that make me so bad?
Old next-door JC Penny’s
with its pneumatic tubes – YES!*
- (Before the now-mostly defunct department store J.C. Penny & Co. moved from America’s downtowns in the late 1960s and early 1970s the iconic store was on First Street in a burg of about 6- to 10-thousand. The accounting and payables department was in a loft above the brick buildings only floor shopping area. A clerk would write up the ticket, put the money, check or whatever in the plastic tube and place that tube into a long plastic holder that was hoisted above ground level and pneumatically carried to the loft: the return receipt came back the same way. So charming. I remained fascinated enough watching mom and dad endure the ritual that when I was in junior high and high school before the store moved – first to a shopping strip center and much later to a mall well out-of-town – I would make sure two or three times a year to spend some cash at Penny’s. Sadly, for a Sanford boy bare feet were preferred and yielded Monday through Fridays nine months a year and Sundays – and sometimes Saturdays – on church and special occasions. And then came basketball, track, tennis and The Beach. Tennie-pumps and sneakers and Flip Flops! Flip Flops. All the more reason to bypass Knight’s and hit good ol’e J.C.!)
richwrapper 