Happy Tuesday, My Friend!
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving and had something fabulous to eat, along with someone to share it with! My stomach and heart are both quite full. And now that Thanksgiving is officially behind us, we can all haul out the holly without ignominy. (I learned a new word.)
Bring on Christmas! For me, thoughts of Christmases past always include memories of downtown Duluth, Minnesota. You see, I grew up in a very small town: Washburn, Wisconsin. The population was 1,960 when I was a kid, which I thought was a magical number because that is also the year I was born. A bigger town, Ashland, is fifteen minutes away, with a population of 9,615 (in 1970). There weren’t many Christmas shopping opportunities in Washburn, but Ashland had more prospects. After all, Ashland sported a JCPenney and a Montgomery Ward, as well as smaller stores that lined the main street. One could presumably do all their Christmas shopping in Ashland and feel pretty satisfied with the experience.
But! If you could manage to get yourself over to Duluth?! Oh, baby, the world was your oyster! Duluth was a monster of a city with 121,398 people! Practically New York City! There are big bridges in Duluth, the mark of a “real big city.” Note: Even beyond Duluth is Minneapolis, but that was too grand to think about most of the year. Only the truly lucky and chosen few were allowed to visit Minneapolis. That happened once a year if you played your cards right.
When I was growing up, all children with crooked teeth had to go to Duluth for orthodontia. Orthodontists did not live in northern Wisconsin, so we had to go to the big city. That meant once a month, I got to go to Duluth to get my braces tightened. Once a month! I was the luckiest of ducks! And the super fun thing was that two of my best friends, Kathy and Andrea, and Andrea’s little sister, Martha, went to the same “ortho” as me. Our moms would take turns driving us there (a little over an hour drive) each month. We’d miss a whole day of school for those appointments! Sheer heaven!
Our ortho was on the main street in the “Medical Arts” building. Now, when I get to heaven someday, and if those “streets of gold” are even better than Duluth’s main street in the 1970s, it will be fabulous!
The Medical Arts building had a bank of elevators, indeed the first elevators I’ve ridden in. And, get this! There was an “elevator lady” that worked there! Her main job was to announce to the waiting riders, “Going up!” She wore an official uniform that made her look like a naval officer, and she held the door open for the passengers as they climbed aboard. It only solidified my belief that Duluth was a very fancy city if it hired “elevator ladies” to help people get on an elevator. After our orthodontics appointments, we’d have lunch somewhere downtown and then do what we did best: Shop.
Christmas time was absolutely magical in downtown Duluth. You talk about stores! Up one side of the street and down the other! But the mother of all department stores was none other than . . .
. . . The Glass Block.
I’m pretty sure The Glass Block gently floated down from heaven one day and landed at 128 West Superior Street. It made Ashland’s JCPenney and Montgomery Ward cower in embarrassment. It was floor upon floor of merchandise magic! Upon entering the main doors, you landed smack dab in the cosmetics department. My friends and I bought more Bonnie Belle Lip Smackers there than I can count, my favorite being “root beer.”
If you were locked into The Glass Block for the rest of your life, I’m sure you’d live a happy and fulfilled life. It had everything, including an in-store coffee shop (I told you Duluth was fancy.) But the crème de la crème of the whole place was the women’s restroom.
First of all, it was not called that. It was the “Ladies’ Lounge.” Lounge! I’d never heard a bathroom referred to as a lounge before. How is eliminating waste products from one’s body considered “lounging”? I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. All I knew was that I loved it. When you walked into the “LL,” there was a long mirror with big lights, a countertop, and a row of fancy plush chairs. Plus, there were other chairs and couches where one might choose to lounge in the midst of their shopping. Oh, sure, there were the usual toilets and sinks in an adjoining room, but everyone has those. I couldn’t resist sitting in one of the cushy chairs before venturing into the shopper’s paradise again. Yes, Duluth knew how to treat its ladies.
I remember an entire section of the store devoted to ladies’ wigs. And a lingerie department to beat all lingerie departments! (As if I’d had any experience with lingerie departments.) I believe my mom bought me my first bra in that dreamy store. Ugh, I have memories of a matronly woman with cat-eye glasses on her nose attached to a chain around her neck, having me slip into a fitting room. She followed me in, measuring tape in hand! Oh, the humiliation! She announced I could start with a “training” bra. What in the world am I supposed to train these things to do? I wondered as I looked down at my boyish figure. I survived the ordeal, though, and emerged from that fitting room a new woman.
As the years went by, a remarkable new phenomenon arrived elsewhere in town: A mall was built. And so the thriving downtowns began to peter out. A new Glass Block was built at the new mall up on the hill. It did not have all of the marvels of that magnificent downtown store, however. And then, in 1981, my beloved Glass Block of downtown Duluth was torn down, my ladies’ lounge and training bra memories among the rubble.
Do you have a place that makes you feel nostalgic? Where is your Duluth? Your Glass Block? I often wonder what today’s kids will tuck away into their hearts as treasured memories. I think that Duluth at Christmastime in the 1970s was the absolute apex of “magical,” but of course, that’s just me.
As you prepare for the Christmas season, I hope you can reach back into the years and pull out sweet memories like I did today. And may you add to them as the years go by. There’s no more Glass Block to visit, but my memories can’t be as quickly razed as the building.
Until next week!
Written with love – – – Patti XOXO
“This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms,
figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions;
these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater,
and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.”
William Shakespeare