|
City Girl By Shannon Rulé
Having someone take a disliking to me has never really bothered me. I have learned with a little time and a great deal of patience the disliking can be overcome. Certainly one has to have a desire for the overcoming. I learned this when merely eighteen years old. It was during a summer job at McRae’s Department Store in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. The store stood catty-cornered to the Governor’s mansion. It was the summer of 1974. We had barely emerged from the sixties and were enthralled with the revelations of our President and his doings in the Watergate Complex. I must confess that at the time I was somewhat less politically inclined and more interested in the current aide of Mississippi Governor Bill Waller. I did, however, manage to see President Nixon when he appeared at the Jackson Coliseum. It was just after he became an “un-indicted co-conspirator” in that obstruction case. I remember that people were packed like sardines in a can. My friends and I slid down the handrails to get closer. No one said a word to us about it. I can only imagine that they were appalled at southern ladies sliding down handrails in front of the President. I also got to see Elvis Presley that summer. He was old by then and I wasn’t really interested. The tickets were free so I went. No body could be more surprised than me, when sitting on the eighth row and watching him singing and swaying, I felt this little tingle inside. It was only then that I could see what all the fuss was about. What a summer it was. Though I was reared in the Delta, that summer I desired to stay in the big city where I was attending college. With some trepidation, I announced to my parents my intentions. Surprisingly, they readily agreed. Next, I spread the word that I was looking for a roommate and an apartment to share for the summer. Soon there was a knock on my dorm room door. Knees propped up with textbook in hand, I hollered, “Come on in!” Imagine my surprise to see a girl standing in the doorway, long, straight hair down to her rump, a halter-top, and low-slung “hip huggers”. They barely covered that bone that holds your legs to the rest of your body. “I heard that you were looking for a roommate,” she said. I looked in disbelief, said not a word and thought, “This person is on drugs.” She came in. She was an art major, no surprise. Although her family lived in town, she wanted her own place. “Do you have a job,” I politely inquired? She assured me that she did and I decided to throw caution to the wind and commit to the relationship. I was also running out of time. The following week we searched available apartments within our budget. One had a bucket in the center of the living room to catch water when it rained. In the kitchen when I opened the oven door, it came off in my hand. Eventually we found a small place that would cost us fifty dollars each per month. Electricity included. The deal was done. Of all my college years, that summer was the best. I had a real job in the city. I drove an old VW beetle bug that my parents had helped me buy. It was a lifesaver as it was content to run on fumes and I was making $1.65 an hour. McRae’s had a parking lot down around Farris Street in Jackson. At that time, this was the black commercial district. They ran a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the store and back. I, of course, often missed the bus in the mornings and had to run the six or eight blocks to the store. Along the way a street person would demand, “Gimme a corder for a hamburga!” Even then, I knew that you couldn’t get a hamburger for a quarter. I never remember having an ounce of fear. I was a city girl and eighteen years old. I had a job and an apartment. Once another employee’s car, parked right next to mine, was stolen. She was sure that she had locked it up as she always did. Mine was still sitting there with the windows down. The thief probably knew it didn’t have any gas. I chugged on off while she waited for the police. The disliking I mentioned, was at McRae’s. I cannot for the life of me figure out why they would place me, an eighteen year old, in the men’s department. Not in THAT men’s department. This store was in a corner of world unlike any other. It had the look and feel of an era twenty or thirty years past. There was a mezzanine and elevators with the gates to pull, though I think by then there was no one to pull them. Gifts were wrapped for free up on the sixth floor. The people that shopped there had shopped there for fifty years. The others were well-established lawyers, bankers, state senators and representatives and the like. Often employees would dash out at 5:30 sharp; leaving a customer standing with mouth agape. They had a city bus to catch. Older employees rode the city bus to and from work. You couldn’t miss your bus! I guess that’s where people like me came in. I stepped up greatly pleased that someone wasn’t “just looking”. There were two men that worked in the suit area. They measured and sold suits on commission. They wore suits everyday and a tape measure around their neck. They were gentlemen most of the time. If I dared to venture toward a customer in their area, their eyes turned to beams of light that would cause me to evaporate. That was O.K. because if I did manage to get to the customer unbeknownst to them, the customer would turn, look at me, blush, and say, “just looking,” scurrying off like a squirrel. I had more people that summer “just looking,” “just looking” at underwear, “just looking” at socks, “just looking” at five hundred suits that looked just like every other suit and cost about the same. That is except for the leisure suits. Yes, that was the summer of the infamous leisure suit. We had yellow, peach, mint, and brown. The last I remember they were selling for $29.95 and the legislature was discussing whether or not they should be allowed in the Capitol. Everyday I was just as nice as pie to the suit salesmen. I never once told anyone that one of them read the entire “Clarion-Ledger” every single morning, sitting in the dressing room. He was an avid golf fan. He was not married and took his vacations to those national golf tournaments. I had never known anyone that could be so enthusiastic about golf. I can see those men clearly, though I can’t quite remember their names. They grew fond of me and I grew to adore them. It just took a little time and taking a genuine liking to them before they liked me back. There was a lady in the department also. She was pre-eminent in the men’s accessory area. For some reason men didn’t seem to mind discussing their underwear with her. I think it might have been those sensible shoes and the way her thick hose wrinkled around her ankles. Once a hussy-looking lady with red hair and eye make up that looked like thick, black, fuzzy spiders said, “Child, you better start wearing support hose or you’re sure to have varicose veins later on.” Even though I hadn’t been wearing any hose, I started to wear those because I sure didn’t want those varicose veins later on. I never-ever was hard headed. Frequently I would cover a lunch hour in the hosiery department. At this store, customers bought stockings. Not pantyhose. Stockings! They came in colors like “barely there”, “suntan” and sizes like 9½ and 10. They were in a tiny little flat box, wrapped in tissue paper. They were soft and silky fine. There was never any night work at the Downtown store. People didn’t go downtown at night. The store closed at 5:45pm, not 5:30 and not 6:00, closing was 5:45. Saturday was a slow day and most the regulars had the day off. At that time, McRae’s Department store made you write thank you notes to ten customers a week, thanking them for shopping with you. I wrote the notes for everyone in my department, since I had few customers and it served to insure the good graces of my fellow workers. Occasionally men would come in the store, smile, and with a twinkle in their eye say, “I got your note!” Ugh. How could they possibly think there was some kind of secret message encoded in the words of, “Thank you for purchasing the brown socks at McRae’s. I truly enjoyed being of service to you. Please come again.” The summer ended all too soon and I had to go back to my dorm room, with knees propped up and a textbook. But it had been the summer of my life. I was afforded an opportunity that few of my age had ever seen, nor would ever see again. I had glimpsed a time that only those that had gone before me would ever know. In a moment of quiet, I can hear the city sounds and smell the exhaust of city buses. I can feel the air of importance as a senator selected a new tie just before an interview on the Capitol steps. I can see the suit men that spent their entire lives clothing others they felt more important than they. We were a strange mixture of a thrown together lot by fate and circumstance, where I first learned to overcome a disliking and be a city girl.
|