All throughout the 1920s 30s 40s and 50s, my grandparents had owned several retail women’s and children’s’ retail clothing stores all of them located on the southwest side of Chicago. It wasn’t until the 1960s when my grandmother decided to close down the stores because of declining sales and an unstable neighborhood and relocated the store to the southwest suburbs of Chicago. The women’s portion of the store was never reopened mainly because of the fierce competition within the industry and the emergence of the “mall”. When the store opened in the late 1960s the name was also changed to reflect what they sold, children’s apparel. As a boy, I used to go to work with my grandmother typically on Saturday mornings and several times during the weekdays while on summer break to not only help out with the day to day operations but to hang out, the place was very cool and had cool things in the back room.
Working with my family at the store around the holidays was especially exciting because my family went to great lengths to “professionally decorate” the store windows and the store itself like the professional window dressers had done for them for the last forty years. My family had stopped using professional widow dressers once they moved from the city to the suburbs because of the continual rising costs of labor and “done-up” windows were falling out of favor because it took up too much valuable front window real estate which was needed to better showcase the merchandise and not the window décor. Although the professionals did not decorate the store windows any more, we still carried on the traditions of the old days and made wonderful looking Christmas windows and displays with all the props and decorations that were stored in the backroom from the last forty years of window trimming. I was about ten years old when I first was able to help with the window trimming for Christmas and an experience that I will never forget.
The store windows were huge and ran along the entire front facade of the store with exception of a glass door, the entire storefront was plate glass that was twelve feet in height. Inside the store there were raised platforms or “stages” as we called them in front of the windows that ran the length of each window on either side of the door and jutted out into the store about twelve to fifteen feet backwards. These window “stages were about one foot in height and each “stage” had a three-foot high white wrought iron railing around it with a narrow opening near the front door to access the platform. It was during the Thanksgiving meal with the family, that the Christmas window “theme” for 1976 was discussed and ideas set in stone. One window would depict Santa’s sleigh and reindeer flying high over the rooftops of a quiet and quaint neighborhood delivering packages to all the sleeping boys and girls while the other window would be our rendition of “Twas The Night Before Christmas” which would be limited to one scene because of space constraints, time, and money.
Monday after Thanksgiving and I was back in school, wishing that I was working on the preliminary Christmas window designs instead of learning about long division and fractions but I knew that Saturday was just around the corner and I was promised that none of the major decorating would take place until then, so in the long run I was happy that I was not going to miss anything.
Saturday morning came soon enough and my grandmother loaded my brother and me, my mother, and several boxes of fresh doughnuts purchased from Wolfs Bakery (our favorite neighborhood bakery), into the car. Since the store was only several communities over, the car ride was not long, about twenty minutes or so and we arrived at 8:30 AM. The store did not officially open until ten so that gave us time to eat out doughnuts and wait for other family members to arrive. I quickly ate my chocolate “long-john” and raspberry filled doughnuts, downed my glass of orange juice and headed for the backroom “staging area” where all the Christmas decorations, props, lighting, and merchandise had been set aside all week long. This was my families “system” and it worked well. It was much easier than locating it and gathering it all up on the same day that it was to be installed wasting valuable time. I navigated the huge backroom and endless isles and isles of storage with some shelves touching the fifteen foot ceilings. In the back right half of the backroom was the staging area and I was amazed at what I saw.
It was nearly nine forty-five before our store help and family members all arrived and we were already behind. First things first and the carpeting that covered the windows stages had to be converted and covered. For the outdoor scene, a huge pure white cloth was stapled over the existing carpeting to act a base “base color” for the snow that was coming later. In the other window, the one depicting Santa inside a living room of a house; the yellow-gold carpet was overlaid with a more neutral carpet remnant and in the center of the window was laid a huge oval floral area rug. Back to window one, where large painted wooden panels (back drops) were being suspended from the ceiling and hung by metal wire. These panels were painted by my mother who was quite talented and depicted rolling hills and cottages, and tree lined streets and acted as a backdrop to the widow scene and gave perspective to the window. At the same time those were being hung, six panels in all, window two was being transformed by my brother and me and several other family members. We were taking real red bricks and stacking them onto one another to create a real looking fireplace, firebox and all. The fireplace was topped by a wooden mantel that was stained a very dark cherry color. As we were finishing up the fireplace, my mother had just finished assembling the eight-foot artificial Christmas tree freeing her up to more onto window one. With the store employees help my brother and I continued to work on window two. We brought into the display, a glossy black rocking chair with a red velvet seat, an end table and old fashioned lamp to sit next to the rocking chair. We put the finishing touches on window two, stockings stuffed with store merchandise (boys and girls socks, underwear, and panties) hung on the mantel. I grabbed the two stockings that had the boys underwear and hung them just so I could see what sizes they were because we only sold one brand of boys briefs, Carter’s. It was easy to identify the size of the briefs in the stocking because there were white labels on the brief package indicating the size. I opened the stocking a bit and looked for this tag as I hung the stockings; there were two different sizes, one that I wore; size 14 and a size 12. As I hung the last stocking, I imagined that I was the boy who woke up Christmas morning and ran downstairs to find briefs in his stocking and this excited me. We then laid out dozens of wrapped packages under the Christmas tree some with ribbons and tie-ons and some with without. The store employees then took over and again laid out store merchandise on top of the packages to complete the display. Several boxes were left open, tissue paper pulled aside revealing the contents, boys dress pants, girls dresses, boys shirts, and both boys and girls jeans. Boys and girls winter jackets, hats, gloves, and scarves were also laid carefully under the tree displaying all the winter wear that the store had to offer. To finish out the window, a real looking Santa was placed into the rocking chair, a long list of “names” and “toys” placed in his hands that touched the floor, cookies on a plate, a glass of milk (milk of magnesia because real milk would spoil). Window two was done and it was all hands on deck on window one, the larger window display.
Window ones’ backdrop panels were hung by the time we all moved to that side of the store and large eye-hooks were now being screwed into the ceiling to support the large hanging sleigh and reindeer. With everyone’s help, the five-foot long, three-foot tall solid wood sleigh was suspended from its’ four corners by steel cables and was hung at an angle to simulate that the sleigh was making a decent. The two reindeer were then hung from the ceiling the same way as the sleigh was and once completed the sleigh and reindeer made a stunning display. We took a dozen or so cans of spray snow and covered both sleigh and reindeer until both were gleaming white and velvety soft feeling. My grandmother then sprinkled handful’s of silvery glitter over the sprayed-on snow, making the whole display shimmers in the dim lighting. Once the sleigh and reindeer were completed, we brought into the display a three by three by three solid wooden house that was placed under the sleigh to give the illusion that the sleigh was flying over the rooftop. The whole house was also coated with the same white velvety spay snow and silver glitter as the sleigh and reindeer were. After all the large pieces of the window display were installed, I worked on assembling one of many artificial Christmas trees that were to be added to the display, some with lights and some without, in all, a total of eight. The trees were set into the window and some were given a coating of white snow while the other were sprinkled with plastic “snow pieces” mixed with silver glitter, the effect had looked very real and made it look like a new fallen snow had just covered the trees. Boy and girl mannequins were added to the display dressed in winter wear that was for sale inside the store and in their hands; snowballs made from Styrofoam balls. Un-rapped presents were put into a giant green velvet bag with a gold braided draw string that was handmade by my grandmother and placed into the back of the sleigh. Additional wrapped packages wear stacked in the back of the sleigh mixed with various merchandise that that store sells, children’s clothing, baby rattles and toys, gloves, mittens, boys and girls dress cloths for the holidays and my favorite, boys underwear packages. I was able to help with loading the sleigh so I took the Carter’s underwear packages and inter-mingled them with the other items, the whole time; imagining that Santa was on his way to my house bringing me new fresh white briefs. The window was trimming was rounded out with white cotton and polyester batting that was placed on the window floor in such a way that it resembled freshly fallen drifted snow. The whole display was sprinkled with silver glitter making the floor shimmer. To complete the window displays, the widows were sprayed on the outside with a heavy coating of white spay snow. The overall look and feel was one right out of a storybook!
During the cleanup near the end of the day, I snuck off into the back room by myself. I had been “teased” all day long working with and seeing underwear and with my elevated state of excitement, I had to do something; but what?
I was always “turned-on” by the thought of wearing briefs larger than what I wore at the time which was a size 14. Unfortunately, the store only sold boys sizes so I could not try a men’s size and my mother and grandmother would think I’m nuts to suggest on buying some for me so I did the next best thing, the only thing that I could think of. In the back room, shelves were stacked with additional stock to put onto the sales floor so I rummaged around the boxes until I found the Carters’ boys underwear boxes. The boxes were labeled by size so I scanned them all for the size that I was looking for, a size 18. I opened the box, snuck out a new package and tucked them under my shirt and ran into the bathroom. In the bathroom, I ripped open the package, pulled the clear tape off the underwear that kept them neatly folded together, separated the three briefs, pulled off my own pants and underwear, and slipped on the size 18s. To my amazement, the larger briefs almost fit me perfectly and I wondered why I was wearing a size 14, I clearly needed a wear larger briefs. I put on my pants, tucked the opened package of briefs into my waistband, opened the back door used for deliveries and tossed my old undies into the garbage dumpster in the back alley of the store. Now, what to do with the underwear that I opened? I did the only thing that a kid of ten or eleven could think of doing, hiding them, so I hid them in an old display fixture that had drawers in it which had not been used in years. I shoved the briefs and opened packed deep into the back of the deep wide drawer, closed it; and thought that the next time that I was working the store that I would have another pair to wear. It never occurred to me that my mother would soon realize what I was doing because she did the laundry and sometime after Christmas she approached me to ask where I got the size 18 briefs. I could lie but what would I say, they just appeared? I could tell the truth, that working on the Christmas windows and handling the underwear turned me on so much that I stole a package to see if a larger size would fit me but I didn’t want to get into trouble and seem like a “freak” so I said the next best thing, “Mom, while working on the window trimming, my underwear kept crawling up my but and the waistband is too tight” “I was uncomfortable, so I grabbed a larger pair to wear”. I think she bought the story because I didn’t get yelled at or grounded. It was weeks later while we were eating dinner that my grandmother came home from the store, placed the opened package of briefs that I had stashed in the back of the drawer on the kitchen counter and said, “I found these as we were putting away the Christmas decorations, I thought you might be able to wear them”. I was both embarrassed and elated at the same time wondering what my mother and grandmother thought but yet excited for I now officially graduated to a larger size, a size that was comparable to a men’s small.. a size 30. I was growing up.
Old Skool Briefs 