Sears #2283: September 1975-March 2017

This may be one of the toughest pieces I have ever decided to write, at least since the death of my mother 19 years ago. But I need to do it because, on March 26th, a friend, an enemy…a major piece of my life, will pass away at the young age of 41 years.

The Sears store in the Swansea Mall will close forever as the result of a changing economic landscape in the town. As I write this, the attached Auto Center has already closed, the huge lighted letters have been removed from their building, and the associates who worked there have moved on. That 100,000 square foot store was my home for 37 years, supporting me through college, marriage, a home, and two children. It gave me food for an as yet unpublished novel, introduced me to my wonderful wife and gave me a group of friends that has influenced me and been in my life to this day.

I left that place in January of 2014 because of a combination of work pressures and complications from my Bi-Polar Disorder. But through it all, I never lost my love for the people I met there or for the building. The Japanese Anime films revolving around SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO make a point of treating the ship like the important cast member. For me, the building, with all of its’ bumps, bruises and blemishes, is a part of those memories as much as the people, events and all.

I was a Freshman at Bridgewater State College when the decision got made, mostly by my parents, that I needed to get a job under my belt to help pay for college expenses. With a car getting 20 miles to the gallon and driving 300 or so miles a week, even with gas only being around $.65 a gallon, that was an added expense on top of my tuition. Leave it to my mom to talk to her hairdresser, whose son, and one of my closest friends, was working there. Next thing I knew, mom had called the store and talked to a woman by the name of Martha, who was the personnel director. It was early in November and, since they were gearing up for the holiday season, they were obviously looking to hire.

So I went in, filled out and application and then took a standardized test they used to screen out the good applicants from the bad. I must have done something right because, about a week later, I got a call to come in and interview. The guy I interviewed with was the manager of the Toy Department and his name was Tim. I must have done okay with that too because the following Saturday, I was learning policies and procedures along with how to operate the register. 

Tim, my first boss, after a long and diverse career with this company, gets to close the store he helped open in September of 1975.

As you can imagine, working in a Toy Department at Christmas was a little on the crazy side. Back then, the store had an outdoor patio area for spring and summer gardening business. The covered patio area was where the cases of toys were stored. So that meant every time that Ernie, the stock guy, or any of the rest of us needed to get stock to refill the floor, we ventured out into the freezing cold to get it. For me the whole thing was a crazy adventure, as I was in college too. So, that meant going to school all day, working until 10 or 11 o’clock every night and then going home to study and such. Many nights, it was 2 or 3 in the morning when I finally got my schoolwork finished. It’s no wonder than I flunked two classes and ended up on Academic Probation.

The one advantage I did gain from the $2.00 job(yes…I was a minimum wage slave in 1977)? I got access to the hottest toy of the 1977 Christmas season: STAR WARS figures! Yeah-I managed to get a full set before Christmas arrived. Now, if only I can find them. They are supposedly stored somewhere at my dad’s house, in a Darth Vader carrying case. Unfortunately, they are not mint in package!

So I made my way through that first Christmas, dealing with the often demanding public and meeting new friends including my longest friend Bob, who has been one of my best friends for almost 40 years now. Bob was part of my wedding party, I was at his wedding and we have endured deaths, marriages, and children together.

The initial ride at Sears was a short one however as, being seasonal help, I was laid-off on Christmas Eve. Once again, I found myself unemployed and out of bread. Christmas and New Year’s came and went and then school started again, with another huge course load. Soon it was February and here comes the legendary Blizzard of 78. No…I wasn’t lucky enough to be working during that time, nor was I stuck on the Bridgewater campus as many of my classmates were. My dad was stuck in Fall River and had to bunk at his mom’s house and that meant I was the man of the house, taking care of my mom and shoveling snow for too many days to want to care.

Soon winter turned to spring and my job prospects were not looking very good. In fact, my godfather had arranged to have me come work for his company, which meant I would be riding a beer truck to New Hampshire twice a week and unloading beer along the way. Because there was nothing that I wanted to do more than anything else but engage in physical labor on my only days off. I was one week away from starting when Martha called and said they had an immediate opening to work in Sporting Goods and would I be interested.

From that day on, I never looked back.

So I went back to Sears and started working for Mike, who ran Sporting Goods, Housewares, Luggage, Office Equipment and Toys. Our department was rather large and had three full-timers and six part-timers. Three days after I started, they held a storewide meeting where the new store manager was introduced to us. I had never met the old store manager when I was there at Christmas and had only met the Operations Manager, Mr. M., once or twice. Mr. C. would be the Store Manager from 1978 until he opened the North Attleboro store in 1989. He was succeeded by Mr. P., who retired in 2001 and was followed by Mrs. V., then Ms. L. and the Mr. G., who was in charge when I finally left. Mrs. L. and then Mr. W., who stayed with us until he went to Middletown in 1989, succeeded Mr. M. as Operations Manager. As Mr. W.’s parting gift, they made me full time. Imagine: I stayed in that job for 12 years and did so on no more than 30 hours a week.

Somewhere along the way, Mike left and Rick was my boss and then Charlie. I got made Charlie’s Assistant Manger in charge of Sporting Goods and then, when he moved on, I was also made the Assistant Auto Center Manager. Not long after I became full-time, I got moved to the Display Department as the Assistant Display manager, which became the Assistant Visual Coordinator, then Visual Coordinator, and then In-Store Marketing Lead and then Operations Manager. I was a Manager until I stepped aside in 2008, becoming a Hardlines Merchandise Assistant.

For the record: I never really wanted that Operations job but felt the obligation to my boss and my family. I was happiest when I was the Visual Coordinator. I enjoyed making the place look nice, picking out the clothes for mannequins and, because of that, always making sure that my wife’ size ended up on them so, when the outfits went to clearance, I could guarantee that I would have one for her. But I was sold a bill of goods by the District Manager about the Operations position, given a hefty pay raise, and ultimately didn’t want to disappoint Ms. L., who I greatly respected and still do. In the end, I did disappoint and removed myself from the job. She was kind enough to protect my pay and I will always be grateful for her treating me like a member of the management staff, even when I no longer was, and always as a member of her family.

When Mrs. V. became Store Manager, I was informed that my schedule of working Monday through Friday, besides coming in on Sunday mornings to hang signs and one out of seven Saturdays, was over and I needed to work almost every Saturday like the rest of the staff. Suffice it to say that going from around eight Saturdays a year to having only eight Saturdays OFF put a major crimp in what was becoming a rather lucrative wedding video business which I folded in 2005 due to being unable to commit to clients. Throughout it all, I never held it against her and took the bullet like I was expected to do. I never held it against her even until the day she died several months ago after a long struggle with cancer. She was a good, but hard person and I miss her.

With so many people and so many memories, it’s hard to pinpoint them all. For the first 12 years there, I found myself trying to get a date and found that to be pretty unsuccessful! When Mrs. L., eventually becoming Ms. P., was in our building, she believed in positive vibes throughout the place and that meant setting up monthly parties at the St. John’s Club in Fall River. Cheap tickets meant a night of dining and dancing. I have many great memories of those. The funniest was one night Bob and I were out there with some of our co-workers and were dancing like fools. Someone came over to me and asked if I was okay to drive home…and I hadn’t had a drop.

The worst experience was the night that the store Christmas party came unglued, complete with a hostess shutting down the bar and threatening to throw all these “drunk fools” out who “allegedly” were having legal age folks buy for them. Truth be told, their servers said: “It’s a Christmas party…everybody drinks”. I had to get up in front of my co-workers and chastise them. That also meant I lost whatever time I had with my date and, as nice as she was, I would have loved to date her again. But that whole night just left a really bad taste in our mouths.

The year before that party, the band I was in, The Hellfire Club, got to debut their newest single Dance this Night at the annual Christmas Party. Two Christmas parties later, I protected my future girlfriend, who I recently discovered on Facebook (because EVERYONE ends up there eventually!) from a jerk who was hitting on her. We dated for several months until she left for Japan. She was a showgirl for Ringling Brothers(no joke) who I just recently reconnected with. Not long after she left, I met my future wife (thanks to a co-worker named Tom, the Grammy Awards and Sinead O’Connor).

Memories…

I remember freaking out Mr. C. because there was a very good possibility that the local news media would be in to harass one of our employees and I threatened to “throw them onto to sidewalk” if they did. Her son, who had contracted AIDS during a blood transfusion, was embroiled in a battle to be able to attend school in town. They never showed, he eventually passed away and they named an elementary school in his honor.

Anyone and everyone who ever worked there has heard the legend of the night one of our security personnel rappelled off the roof of the building to try to stop a potential thief. After a string of car break-ins with the hot item of the time being radar detectors, a sting operation was set-up. And when it all went down, this one security officer rappelled off the roof, screaming like a madman as he did. The perpetrator fled, another officer’s car blew it’s transmission during the high speed chase and some poor woman who was trying to get her VCR repaired almost crapped her pants during it all! But another radar detector never ever got stolen!

My boss Mike who was all about playing with the toys in the Toy Department, which he managed. That meant video games…yes-Pong, the Atari 2600, Intellivision, etc., and remote control cars. One night, he was zipping a car up and down the aisle around my ex-boss Tim, who was trying to sell some appliances to a couple. After several minutes of being annoyed, Tim excused himself and stomped on the car, blasting all four wheels off and putting the fun to an end.

There was that time when one of my co-workers was driving Tim nuts…so he locked him in a chest freezer. A customer asked if that could be harmful and Tim said: “No, we close in half an hour.” How about the person who wanted bags for a Regina vacuum but kept yelling she needed “vagina bags”? There was the customer who complained about the gas stove that had a clock that didn’t work. When I asked if they plugged the clock in, the reply was: “Why? It’s a gas stove!” One of the original maintenance guys came into the lunch room one day to change a light bulb. Someone said they would help. “You hold onto the bulb and we’ll turn the ladder.” He knew they would probably do it…because they would…and he left the room. That light never got changed until after he retired.

One of the greatest characters I worked with was a guy named George or, as he was known, “Sharkey”. George could sell the clothes off your back and has his own dedicated group of customers. I once watched him pull his own tooth with a pair of pliers he took off the sales floor. You did not want to have a drinking contest with him, as it was like drinking with Lemmy. I recall he and I drinking screwdrivers in the stock room on Christmas Eve with fixings that was stored in Mr. M.’s file cabinet. Of course, I recall drinking champagne in a security perch with the security manager on New Years Eve. I remember someone giving George a milkshake…only to find out he was lactose intolerant and sh*t himself all the way through the stock room to the bathroom. On the day he retired, he had a band come in and pipe him out of the building.

Speaking of bands and such, I remember the day we had a belly dancer come in for the 40th birthday of two of the managers. Or the multiple times my friend Keith dressed in drag to help roast other managers on their birthdays. Or the time my buddy Brian broke his hand…punching a cow in the head. If you were a friend of The Hellfire Club, you were coming to our “Lumber Party”, where you needed to bring wood to enter. There were nights after work at B.B. Binks or the Rustic Pub or even the Hoy Tin Restaurant (eat there once…and you’re “Hoytin”!). There were Sunday morning softball games and trips to the Red Sox or the Paw Sox or even…dare I say it…the strip club. There was always something to do, somewhere to go, or someone to be with. If you were there, although there was often competition among salespersons and competition among people looking for companions, you were family.

Thieves…the guy that tried to escape by jumping into the disgusting pond behind the building and breathing through a straw. The Auto Center Manager and a security person caught him by borrowing one of the canoes we had for sale and launching it in the pond. The bad guy got caught, but the canoe, covered in algae and nasty slime, was a total loss. Thieves…the fat man that took four of us to cuff and then found out that he was a walking needle mark. Standing in the bathroom with my friend Keith, also in my wedding, and praying that we didn’t catch something from skin to skin contact on this sweaty beast. Thieves…the guy who pissed himself after stealing a chainsaw and being apprehended by two security officers. Thieves…watching the two security managers bounce a shoplifter’s head off the pavement like a basketball until he finally went limp and they could put cuffs on him. Thieves…the gang of four that left carnage in their wake and one of my co-workers in a hospital bed for weeks.

Chaotic moments…that time that a pipe broke in the wall where the janitor’s mop sink was. That meant Tim and I were getting our pretty suits soaked as we smashed the tile wall with sledge hammers to gain access to the shut-off valve for the main. Chaotic moments…the guy who staggered in, clutching his belly, and bleeding all over the place as someone followed him brandishing a knife. Apparently, there had been some altercation in the parking lot that spilled into the store. Chaotic moments…taping up and boarding up windows because of approaching hurricanes.

Alarm calls…While a member of the management staff, I ended up on the alarm call list. In most cases, those were false alarms caused by any number of things from power outages to plow trucks setting off motion detectors to stray field mice doing the same. Alarm calls…the night I had to investigate a possible call, in a snowstorm, with my pregnant wife. Alarm calls…the night I showed up, meeting my security manager there, to find an entire window had been smashed and we had to hold the fort down in mid January with a 30 mile an hour wind whipping in through the broken window while we clean up broken glass. Alarms calls…having a major power outage at the store and finding that it went back to a major power surge. There is nothing like the rush of hitting the main transformer and praying that you won’t eat a voluminous amount of volts! Alarm calls…showing up and having the responding officer, who may have been brand new on the job, follow me (yes…the guy with the gun) and continually snapping and unsnapping his holster. I kept waiting for him to accidentally shoot me in the back!

Friends…There are far too many acquaintances made and far too many friends made in my 37 years to mention, between full-timers, part-timers, seasonal hires, etc. Many are still Facebook friends. As I mentioned earlier, I met my future wife there, even though our first meeting resulted in dual insults. 75% of my wedding party was made up of Sears co-workers-Geoff, Keith and Bobby. When my oldest child came into my life, my friends threw a baby shower. When my little one came along, more gifts. Because of that place, I met my mate Randy, which led to a friendship and a musical partnership that has lasted for 30 years. There are so many people I have been associated with over those years and so many that are gone too soon. At least two of my bosses are gone, as are several handfuls of co-workers, both young and old. Every time I see a name in the paper or on Facebook, it cuts into me. And while there are many I have not seen in many a year, I still am affected and remember the good times.

But there are nicknames I can recall and, if you were a part of this, you’ll know who they were and will smile. Totes, Johnny V., Trudy, The Wife, Bobby A., Paulie A., Wanker, Joe M., Kevin the Shipper, BSB., Big Tony, Connie, Hippo, Johnny M., “Rick”, Weeda, Robbie, Slappy, Slapnutz, Lobo, Neal Heaton, Scooter, Ange, Bobby K., Schwacker, Choo Choo Charlie, The Baby Killer, Bonzo, Weeble’s Wobble, The Walrus, Nattie, Netsie, The Misses, The Guv, Salto, Suzie Q., Peeps, Smithers, Little Tokyo, Six Pack, Kinnaneamania, Lats, Spike, Spot, Nibbles, Bleaker Bill, Big Dope, Queenie, Weezie, Mr. Ed, Joe Rap, Saez, and so on… 


So here we are: days away from the doors being closed and the lights being turned off one last time. The name will come off the building and it, like the Apex store at the other end of the Mall, will become another empty building…but a 100,000 square foot building. I have created a Facebook group for all of us who spent time there to reside in and share memories. 42 years means a lot of veterans, whether it was for a month, or several decades-all are welcome. As of this writing, there are almost 300 members from all eras of the place. And almost all say the same thing: this represented some of the greatest moments of our lives. This was a place where lifelong friendships were made.

For now, I leave it all here. I may revisit this blog and update. Maybe not. For now, I know that I have made a whole lifetime of friendships and those experiences, especially the influence of a handful of people who became my mentors, colored the person that I grew up to be. One door opens and one door closes. And while my door closed in 2014, the feelings left behind are still there. My hope is I can be there on the last day and help shut off the lights-something I never got to do when I left so suddenly. THAT would bring closure to me. What I also know, if that my children can never follow in my footsteps for their first jobs. At least not here.