Shopping "Uptown"

I suppose I'm no different than most other men in that I don't enjoy "shopping" the way women do. I can't "browse," strolling leisurely through a store looking at everything, whether I need it or not. (Unless it's a bookstore, then that's a different story.)

No, I must have a specific item in mind. Something I need. Something that I know where in the store it is and what it looks like. I then go in, go to the precise department and aisle. Get it. Go to the check-out lane. And get out. All in a matter of minutes. The faster, the better.

Daddy wasn't that way. He shopped like a woman. He could spend all day shopping, looking closely at everything, even if he didn't need or want any of it. Forget about getting out anytime soon if he was in a Home Depot, a Big Lots, or a Hammer's. Or any store, for that matter!

I remember one Black Friday when he, my sister, my sister-in-law, and my wife all went shopping. They left at the crack of dawn and didn't return until well after dark. By then, even the women were griping (under their breath, of course) about how slowly Daddy shopped. I'm glad I chose to stay home.

My wife isn't as bad as Daddy was, but she still doesn't like to take me with her when she shops. "You rush me too much," she complains. "You never want to look."

Having fallen arches with the accompanying leg and back pain contributes to my haste, I guess. But foremost in my distaste for shopping is the inescapable sense that I'm wasting time just to stroll and browse among things that I don't need and have no intention of buying. Unless it's in a bookstore.

As a child, I remember going "uptown" to Knoxville to shop or for an appointment with Dr. Goodman, our optometrist. We usually parked in the parking garage of the Miller's Department Store. (Mother continued to call it Rich's long after that firm sold out to Miller's.) We would walk through the tunnel under Henley Street, ride the elevator at the end of the tunnel, and enter the store.

I think the store, which was expansive, had three floors above the basement, all connected by Otis escalators. The floors, glass counters, and racks were always spotless and shiny. As we strolled the floors, could hear a mysterious-sounding chime that occasionally rang out a pattern of signals in some sort of coded message to some clerk or department. Sometimes it would be one signal, at other times two, three, or four.

If we was early and the store hadn't yet opened, when the elevator doors opened, we were greeted by a solid wall that boldly announced the store's hours. The doors would close and the elevator would return to the tunnel level to pick up other early shoppers. Then back it came to the store's tunnel entrance. As if by magic, the store would be open and the obstructing wall gone.

Mother especially enjoyed going to Miller's during their annual Harvest Sale. I enjoyed her going when they had their chocolate drops on sale. Mother would return home with several five-pound boxes of the cream-filled delights and stick them in the freezer. I pilfered between-meals snacks from the freezer too many times, always being careful to take from a different box each time so Mother wouldn't know. But after I made so many visits, how could she not have known?

Having finished strolling and browsing, we would exit on the opposite side of the store and head up Church Street toward Gay Street (so named years and years before that word was usurped and changed to its current meaning). If we had an appointment with Dr. Goodman and were running close, we'd just breeze through the store, using it as a mere thoroughfare. "We'll catch it on the way back to the parking garage," Mother would explain.

En route to Dr. Goodman's office, a narrow, crowded little place squeezed between two other businesses I no longer remember, we passed a parking lot operated by Sid Toomey, a neighbor. The old customs house. And Market Square Mall, where we'd usually hear a country preacher yelling out the gospel to passers by.

I always thought Market Square was a dirty, smelly place. Its open central mall often was filled with vendors of all sorts, most often people selling fruits and vegetables, not always of the freshest variety, I thought. All around the mall were a variety of small stores--tobacconists, florists, eateries, etc. The north end of the mall was in the shadow of the tall and sterile headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The city has since cleaned up the area, converting it into a much more desirable gathering place. One of our daughter's violin classes performed an open-air concert there years ago.

The only store on Market Square that we visited, however, was Watson's. I enjoyed going there because they had Wembley ties, which I badly needed to meet the requirement of the university I was attending, that all male students wear ties. Wemblies were perfect for slightly fashion-challenged guys because they each carried a little label saying, "For black, gray, or blue suits" or "For brown, olive, or tan suits." A fellow couldn't go wrong following Wembley's fashion advice.

Mother liked Watson's because of the deals she sometimes found in their "bargain basement." I stood along the wall while she "browsed," watching the women tug and pull at the piles of clothing unceremoniously dumped on the display tables. I once witnessed two women engage in a friendly tug-of-war game when one one one side of a table was pulling at the sleeve of a blouse and another on the opposite side was pulling on the other sleeve of the same blouse. There were so many clothes on top of the blouse that neither knew they were tugging on the same piece of clothing.

We'd often stop in at the Miller's Annex, just past Market Square, where the store offered some of the items that didn't fit on the shelves or racks in their other locations. (Miller's also had another, older store on Gay Street, for a total of three locations within just a few blocks of each other.) Mother found a lot of her shoes there.

Gay Street was the main shopping district "uptown." Not only Miller's but also Penney's, Kress's, Fowler's Furniture, National Shirt Shop, and a wide range of other stores were located there. One store had an outdoor scale on which one could weigh himself for free. Along the sidewalk were usually one or two beggars selling pencils or something else. The sidewalks always seemed to be crowded, and I can still recall the smell and sound of the Knoxville Transit Line buses as they navigated their routes all along the length of the street.

If we were making a day of it (which wasn't rare, especially if Daddy was along), we often stopped at S&W Cafeteria for lunch. It had two serving lines, one on the main floor and another in the basement, and three levels of seating. We usually sat in a booth on the upper level so we could watch people entering below as we ate. (You can see the grand staircase to the upper level through the window in the photo to the left.) I was always impressed by the white-clad waiters who carried our trays to our booth, distributed the dishes in front of us, always getting the right entrees before the right people, and then stood quietly aside, their hand inconspicuously extended for the expected tip. Sometimes an organist played the organ on the main floor. Once, the organist saw me, just a toddler at the time, and played "How Much Is that Doggie in the Window?" for me.

Memories of shopping "uptown" are enjoyable to me even today. Shopping less so. Get me in, get me out!