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My Days at Monkey Ward |
 Ward's had many stores like this in the 1950s. One of Ron's jobs was changing the light bulbs in those lofty hanging lights, usually with shoppers milling all around him. |
Somehow he made it to the store
on that fateful morning in 1955
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
FOR ALL those who mistakenly believe I went directly from a career delivering newspapers to another career writing for them, it may be a shock to learn I'm growing wistfully nostalgic about the demise of my former employer, Montgomery Ward & Co.
That's right: I used to work for Monkey Wards. And I hasten to point out they were calling it that before I ever worked there.
As a matter of fact, I inherited the job from another person who also turned out to be a columnist writing for this website, but I'm not sure he's as wistfully nostalgic about it as I am--and probably would just as soon not have the world know about his humble beginnings.
In my social milieu of the early 1950s, it was de rigeur for teenage boys to have after-school and weekend jobs. Even though I was quite happy delivering copies of the Santa Cruz Sentinel by bicycle on Route 58, I knew it was terribly uncool for a high school boy to still have a paper route--unless, of course, it was a motor route. That's why I jumped at the chance to take over the job of "handyboy" at the Monkey Ward catalog store on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz, Calif.
One of my tasks was to sweep the sidewalks in front of the store. I took my own sweet time doing it, too, because it was my one chance to be on the main street of the town, showing off the fact that I had a real job that didn't involve rubber bands, rolled-up newspapers and the eternal quest for "perfect service," which earned all paper carriers bonus points.
I worked out several ways of pushing my broom that were bound to attract the eyes of teenage girls. There was the Duke Wayne Stroll, the Jerry Lewis Scramble and my personal favorite--the Lon Chaney, Jr., Mummy's Mambo, which involved dragging one foot. I'm confident I attracted attention, all right, but perhaps not from as many teenage girls as I wanted.
Catalog stores were simple operations: Women would come in, stand at the counter and order stuff out of the catalogs. When the stuff came in, I would bring it up to the front desk or--if it was big enough--dolly it out to the "loading dock," which was just the rear sidewalk behind the store.
Most of the time I was "handy" enough to handle my work assignments. The only one that really gave me the jitters was changing the light bulbs in these enormous hanging globes all over the store. That meant manhandling a very long ladder out into the midst of the shoppers, positioning it under the globe, climbing up to the very top rung and unlatching the monster globe without letting it slip through my invariably sweaty palms to crash on the floor below--or, worse yet, on a shopper's cranium. The only time that almost happened was the first time--when I tried to hold onto the globe with one hand while screwing in the light bulb with the other. After I teetered back and forth for one perilous minute, I vowed to always take the globe to the floor, set it there, then climb back up to put in the bulb.
Every now and then, some lady would bring her kids with her to the store at the same time I was up the ladder, praying to the Gods of Stability. Many children love to play hide and seek around anything tall, which is what happened the day two little rat-chasers actually teetered my ladder too far and I came down, ladder and all. I was much more agile then than I am now, so I somehow managed to land on my feet and caught the ladder before it destroyed anything or anyone.
I was best at stuff that required hard labor, like bringing in the new catalogs. Working by myself, I would have to move bundles containing several thousand catalogs when the huge delivery van left them on the sidewalk behind the store. I moved them from sidewalk to storage area, then from storage area to store proper. I figured I lifted more tonnage on "catalog day" than Hercules did while cleaning out those famous stables of his. I felt buffed and manly toting those bundles.
I was worst at putting things together. I suffered partial nervous collapse when Miss Christensen, my boss, informed me I would have to assemble a bicycle for a kid whose dad had ordered it as a surprise birthday present. I could have handled an American Schwinn because I'd been dismantling those and putting them back together for years, but the first generation of British racing bikes had started to come in and Monkey Ward had them. I still shiver at the sound of the word "metric." The kid's dad also shivered when he came to pick up the bike, which resembled the sort of bike Dr. Frankenstein might have put together after a few too many brews.
It was about that time that the Santa Cruz catalog store adopted a "no assembly" policy, which lasted as long as my employment did. Miss Christensen seemed a mite severe until she saw how long I'd labored over that bike. She warmed up to me quite a bit after that, which convinced me even the most austere women often have tender hearts.
I also remember something else with real nostalgia: Ward's paid me each week, but with a "pay envelope" filled with cash. I never saw a paycheck all the time I was at Monkey Ward.
As you may have guessed, I was the only person of the male persuasion working at the Monkey Ward catalog store. Most of the "girls" were quite nice to me, perhaps because I was a defenseless boy who seemed to need a few extra mothers. They finally hired Nancy, a high school girl from my class, who was very sweet. Just the other day I received an email from her after more than 40 years of no contact--and she, too, was growing nostalgic about Monkey Ward's. I guess it gets in the blood.
For me, though, the most vivid memory of my years at Monkey Ward came on a Saturday in December in 1955. It was my job to meet one of the girls at the store at 7 a.m. and help get it ready to open it up for business. It had rained quite a bit the night before, which wasn't so unusual for Santa Cruz, but I was stunned when I crossed the San Lorenzo River just before 7 a.m. and saw whole houses floating in the river. There had been a so-called "100-year-flood" during the night and the river had flowed right down Pacific Avenue and into all the stores.
Just a few minutes after I crossed the bridge, it was closed to traffic. When I got to Monkey Ward, nobody else was there. Later, I learned that "Angie," the early girl, had barely escaped flood waters that had come into her mobile home and carried it away. None of the other women could get to the store for quite some time. Meanwhile, the National Guard was mobilized and started pressing everyone into sandbag duty, helping build up the banks of the river in fear of a second flood that night.
In those days, we stored all the layaway Christmas goods in tall shelves in the large storeroom. Those shelves had toppled and the goods were soaked and ruined. I opened the basement door to see the damage down there and found it now was an indoor swimming pool, about 12 feet deep. I'd never seen such a mess. The rest of the day remains a blur, but the good news is that all the girls survived the flood and the river didn't overflow the second night.
Though I never was much of a Monkey Ward shopper, I'm very sorry to see the old company bite the dust. It gave me my first grown-up job and my first of what turned out to be many pleasant experiences working for and with women. I wouldn't trade that job for any of the gas pump jockey or bowling alley pin-setting jobs my pals snagged in their high school years.
It may not have been a very well-paying job, but at least a guy never got greasy working at Monkey Ward.
© 2001 by Ron Miller. The drawing is from ISMI's Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
You can comment on this column or contact Ron Miller with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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