By Ken Lass
The Christmas season means many different things to different people. The birthday of Jesus, Santa Claus, presents under the tree. In the days of my childhood, back in the 1950s, it also meant a lot of long hours and hard work for my Dad and Mom. Dad owned and operated a hardware store in the small town where I was raised.
Ken Lass, Tribune columnist
During the industrial boom that followed the end of World War Two, the local hardware store became a lucrative business as new buildings and the renovation of old ones exploded in popularity. Soldiers coming home were having children and needing more and bigger places to live or needed to expand their present house. They needed lumber and paint and tools and nuts and bolts. The hardware store was the place to find it. At Dad’s place, the main floor displayed all the construction stuff, as well as lighting and lawn care machinery. Then down the stairs in the basement was the toy area. Solid cast iron toy trucks and bulldozers, race cars, electric train sets and doll houses, board games, and puzzles. A Christmas gift shopper’s paradise. Business was good.
But there was trouble on the horizon. A new concept was gaining traction, initially in the big cities, then sprawling out to the suburbs. Superstores were springing up. They were the anchor attraction of an even bigger concept, shopping malls. All of your needs are in one expansive location. Why go to the local hardware place when you could go to a mall and find what you needed, plus buy your groceries, your drugs, clothes, and school supplies for your children, get your hair done, and the oil changed in your car?
By the end of the fifties, the impact on Dad’s little store was reaching the critical stage. Dad and Mom never talked about it in front of me, and I never lacked for anything, but even as a child, I could sense times were hard, and they were struggling to get by. The Christmas season became the make-or-break time of year. The store had to make enough profit during the month of December to sustain it through the rest of the calendar.
It was all hands on deck. Dad couldn’t afford to pay for help, so Mom worked in the store as well. So did my grandmother and her sister. Which brought up the problem: What to do with me? Paying a sitter would defeat the purpose, so they simply brought me along. Thus, on weekends, the store became my home away from home, all day and night until closing time at 9 p.m. Then, every day, once school shut down for Christmas break.
It was actually pretty cool. Dad and Mom just needed me to stay out of the way, so I spent most of the time hanging out on the lower floor with the toys. Grandma was the cashier down there, and she let me sneak race cars and GI Joes’ off the shelf to play with. At the end of the day, we would put them back up in place for sale as new. Dad would have had a fit if he found out. We never told him. Grandma went to the grave with our secret. In retrospect, I think of myself as a sort of quality control toy tester. Those items were kid tested and approved.
If a customer bought something as a Christmas gift, Mom would gift wrap it for them. No extra charge. At one point, she tried to teach me how to gift wrap, thinking that would be something to keep me busy and a great way for me to help out. I tried my best, I really did, but I just couldn’t get the corners right, and there was always too much slack in the seams. I stunk at gift wrapping, and I still do.
There was a small grocery store next to our building. When I got hungry for a snack, I would wait for Grandma to get distracted with a customer, and I would punch the no-sale key on the charcoal gray metal cash register. The drawer would pop open, and I would take out a dime, run next door and buy a Fudgesicle. Man, I loved Fudgesicles. I still do. Anyway, I did this several times during the course of a day, and at the close of business, Dad would try to balance the receipts and always came up about a dollar short. He would fuss at Grandma, accusing her of not counting change accurately. I suspect she knew what I was doing, but she took the heat. She never ratted me out. Took that to the grave too. What an incredible woman.
Mostly, I remember my family being on their feet all day and night, helping customers, demonstrating merchandise, carrying purchases out to their car, dealing with returns and exchanges, and the inevitable complaints that came with them. When we finally got home, they would collapse exhausted into a chair. I guess I really didn’t process it at the time, but I realize now how hard they worked to provide for us. And come Christmas day, there were always ample presents for all of us under the tree.
By the way, many of my presents had a very familiar look about them. Turns out, Santa must have done some of his Christmas shopping at Dad’s store.
(Ken Lass is a retired Birmingham TV news and sports anchor and Trussville resident.)
