A week or so back we posted a photo of a Western Auto store on our Steuben County Historical Society Facebook page, and that led to a LOT of comments with reminiscences… many of them from people remembering ther first Western Flyer bicycle!
*That particular store was on Liberty Street in Bath. But there were other Western Autos in Bath over time, plus more in Hornell and Addison, not to mention Wellsville, Elkland, and many others.
*I myself put in ten years at Western Auto, mostly in Rhode Island but incuding a few months in Virginia. As the name suggests, it was HUGE in auto parts, definitely including tires. Our store in Rhode Island, in a village about the size of Cohocton, sold thousands of tires every year. But “your home town department store” also sold paints, furniture, electronics, appliances, sporting goods, toys, housewares, and more. I estimated that I personally sold enough firearms and ammunition to outfit a regiment of infantry.
*Western Auto’s “associate store” arrangements let local owners use the name and buy the products while retaining their own ownership and control, thus vastly augmenting their own hardware, auto parts, or sporting goods store.
*This was only one of a number of chain stores of fond memories. Ames, Jamesway, and Woolworth’s are in memory still green. Slide back a little farther and you’ll find W. T. Grant’s… J. J. Newbery’s… Ben Franklin. Slide back even more and you’ll encounter such local chains as Cohn’s Clothing and Peck’s Hardware.
*Then of course there are supermarket chains (A&P, Acme, Grand Union) and drug store chains (Peterson’s, Eckerd, Rexall).
*The great granddaddy of them all, I suppose, is Sears, Roebuck. Sears grew up with the post office, especially once the Grange had bullied the government into creating Rural Free Delivery. Sears promoted by mail, took orders by mail, got paid by mail, and made deliveries by mail.
*This of course led to creation of the gigantic Sears catalog, which covered everything from the tiniest widget to an entire house. There’s a Sears house still occupied in Pleasant Valley. A house was once delivered to the Branchport area by trolley.
*Mothers were known to tear out the pages dedicated to “foundation garments” before releasing the catalog to the family’s young people. Last year’s catalog, like last year’s almanac, often wound up in the outhouse, where those out-of-date pages proved still to be of use.
*As folks relied more on cars and less on mail, Sears developed more brick-and-mortar presence, either as catalog centers or as full-blown stores. The catalog center in Bath is closing out just now.
*Which makes a sad if fitting backdrop for our next Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture, “America’s Wish Book: The Story of Sears, Roebuck,” by Pam Farr of Big Flats Historical Society. The free presentation will be at 4 PM Friday, April 6, at Centenary Methodist Church in Bath. We hope to see you there, and we hope you’ll bring your memories!