Life’s Little Learning Experiences

When V-J Day came -- victory in the Japanese sector of World War II -- we were given a day off at school. A group of guys decided to spend the day out in the country just goofing off as we did many times. One of the group had a bottle of wine and it was the first experience for most of us in the area of alcoholic beverages. Nobody much cared for the taste and by the time it got around to everyone, only a swallow or two was available to each.

However, by the end of the day we had wandered some five miles to the little town of Arthur and it was getting dark. The only business open in town was a tavern so we went in and pooled our money for something to eat.

While doing this, a highway patrol officer came in, looked us over and called us aside for a talk. We thought we were in big trouble for being under age and in a tavern but we found out later that wasn’t the case. It seems some inmates of the Eldora boys’ reformatory had escaped and we fit the description in a general way. After the patrol officer talked to us a while and was convinced we weren’t the runaways, he called our folks and they came to pick us up. By that time it was nearly midnight and all our parents were so concerned we were not disciplined too harshly.

A part time job opening came up during my senior year. It was at the J.C. Penney department store. It was cleaner and paid a little more, so I took it. Later, however, a layoff came and it boiled down to the manager’s son or me, so guess who got the ax? It was near graduation so I didn’t suffer too much. I did learn not to expect good work to out-shine blood ties.

Penney’s was (and is) a national chain and it was a good learning experience for me. One merchandising philosophy they had was to mark down items at specific times during their shelf life. All products were date coded so we knew how long they had been in the store. At the end of three months, ten per cent would be knocked off, another ten the next three months, and so on, until the item sold. After a year, if the item was still in the store, it would be discarded. It seems a costly method but it insured fresh stock and not very much was left at the end of a year.

The only thing I can remember not selling was a group of terribly gaudy bow ties that I was told to take to the trash. I couldn’t bear to throw them away so I stashed them at home and later became somewhat of a symbol for bow ties in high school and college.

The Penney’s store had the old pneumatic system of recording all sales. The clerk put the sales ticket and money in the tube and it was spirited to a second floor balcony where a bookkeeper made change and sent it back. All transactions throughout the store were made in this way -- a far cry from today’s electronic cash registers.

We had an interesting time when we were able to get scarce war-time goods such as silk hose. We got enough of a shipment to advertise the arrival and the crowd of women was unbelievable. At the end of the day, the heavy counters lining the women’s ready-to-wear department were nearly pushed to the wall from the crush of customers. One woman said she dropped her watch in a dressing room but it was so crowded she couldn’t bend over to pick it up. She asked a clerk to look for it after the crowd left at closing time.