To Begin at the Beginning 

Marx Brothers Clothing had gone out of business sometime during the spring of 1961, but I didn’t notice.  It had apparently been in Sunbury for years.  But like so many of the locally owned businesses on Market Street, it was off the radar of every kid in town.  But then my friend Larry called.  A guy who owned a men’s clothing store in Danville by the name of Bob Newman was leasing the space and was going to clone another store right there.  He was a client of Larry’s dad, who had an electrical contracting business, and Larry had been recruited to clean out the basement before any renovation would start.  One look convinced Larry and his dad that Larry needed help.  Who did they know who was perpetually broke and who would jump at the chance to make money?  The choice was obvious:  me.

The task was simple enough:  carry about a zillion boxes of stuff up the wood plank stairs, through the shell of what was once a store, and outside to the back where somebody would load it all up and take it to the town dump across Coal Creek hard against Kirschner’s Hill.  There weren’t any clothes, just tons of flattened boxes for packaging up merchandise for customers, cartons and cartons of large brown match books with the Marx Brothers logo, hat boxes to the ceiling, huge piles of blank receipt books and order blanks, boxes of coupons for Christmas clubs and layaways.  The deeper we went, the dustier and dirtier we got.  After two days, we were nearing the bottom when I stepped on a rusty nail that went right through my Red Ball Jets and into my foot.  Larry helped me up the stairs just in time to run into Bob Newman himself and two recruits hired to help run his new operation:  Vince Spiziri, who once had his own store and whose wife had a women’s hat shop just a couple doors up the street, and Joe Costello, who had his own tailor shop across Market Street.  We looked as if we had just crawled through two miles of exhaust vent from a carpenter’s shop.  Larry was holding me up as I hopped on one foot.

Larry tried to smooth things out, “Just a turned ankle.  No damage.  We’ll be back in a minute.”

I had to peg-leg all the way to Dr. Solomon’s office on the square, luckily only a half block away.  Dr. Solomon did not take appointments, and most of his old biddy patients showed up at 9 AM and sat in the front waiting room to be first and be ushered in sometime after lunch.  He also had an enclosed back porch where people sat on benches as the doc shuffled people in and out in some sort of pecking order that ordinary folks could never figure out.  We went in the back.  When a nurse came out and saw my bloody sneaker, she ushered me in to a broom closet sized room and had me take off my shoe.

Dr. Solomon and I were old friends.  Aside from delivering me at the old Mary S. Packer hospital, where Mom’s “room” was a spot in the hallway outside the delivery room due to the crush of newborn baby boomers, he was a regular visitor to our house on Court Street, delivering penicillin shots to my butt during my twice-a-year bouts of severe bronchitis.  I waited forever.  On the wall was a hand-made sign:  “DON’T THROW UP, THE FLOOR CAN’T SWALLOW.”  Okay, I guess that made sense.  My foot was throbbing.  Finally, in comes “Doctor Dan.”  He pulls up my foot, takes a look, and turns his head and yells to no one I could see, “Betadyne and a tetanus shot.  Back in a week.”

He was gone in a flash.  The nurse put this ugly brown crap on my foot followed by a big Band-Aid.  She disappeared and came back with a skinny glass hypo, “This is gonna hurt.”  She rolled up my sleeve and delivered a shockingly painful shot way out of proportion to what I expected.  I was ushered out rubbing my arm and limping as the next victim brushed by to take my seat.  Larry stood up.

“Are you going to live?  Your condition must be hopeless, you were in there all of five minutes.”

“My parents are going to kill me.  God knows how much that’ll cost.  My Mom is going to make me deliver one of her homemade pies again.  I hope they like raspberry custard.”

“Not to worry.  My Dad will put it on his workman’s comp.  I already got the form from the nurse.  I’ve mangled myself so many times working for my Dad’s company, I’m an old hand at this.  My Dad will even fill out the form for you.”

 

I Apprentice at Bob Newman’s 

The opening of the new store was quite an event.  At that stage of things, the opening of ANY new store in town was a very big deal.  Bob Newman’s was supposed to be both upscale and slanted to a younger crowd more inclined to button-down shirts and Madras Bermuda shorts than “The Ace” or “Kaufmann Brothers” or, God forbid, “The Sunbury Workman’s Store.”  Larry was hired on as stock boy and all around go-fer.  But living so far out of town was a problem, and it didn’t take long until I got another call.

“Lytle, you gotta save me.  My mom has to pick me up at 5:30, which means she has to semi-cook dinner, stop, drive into town to get me, and then rush back so dad can eat before 7 PM.  The old man’s had a fit every night that I’ve worked at Newman’s.  I gotta quit, and you gotta be my replacement.”

It was presented as if I didn’t have any say in the matter, so I agreed.  “When do I start?”

“After school tomorrow.  I’ve got one day to show you the ropes because my old man won’t tolerate another late supper.”

So began my career in retail men’s clothing.  Not that there was any retail in it for me.  I emptied waste cans, swept and mopped out the entryway between the display windows out front, swept the sidewalk between the front windows and the parking meters, Windexed the step-in, three-way mirrors, vacuumed the carpets, and the hands-down killer:  brushed clothes.  After the first dozen or so top coats, your arm went numb.  After a dozen more, gangrene was a certainty.  Beyond that, there was just unendurable pain.  And all for 50¢ an hour.  There was no work on Wednesday because all the locally owned stores in town closed at noon, and I only got two hours on Saturday morning.  Thus, my gross pay (in cash in a heavy paper pay envelope) was something like five bucks a week.  At least I’d end up with highly developed arm muscles.

And I had to endure the obligatory “let’s see if he’s a crook” test.  The Newman’s permutation was to lay out a crisp one-dollar bill on top of the wastepaper in the can right by the cash register.  It was so obvious it hurt.  Of course, I turned it in to Mr. Newman himself, thus alleviating fear and hopefully encouraging trust.  I’ll never know because nobody said anything other than “thanks.”

All my money went into my newly-opened college savings account at the First National Bank.  I’d take my cash along with the small booklet to my favorite teller, an imposing man by the name of Mr. Ries.  He was my favorite because he looked authoritarian and magisterial.  The female tellers all looked like they went to the “Win One for Jesus” adult Sunday school class at church.  The booklet would go into this machine that sort of looked like the one used at the library to stamp the cards at the back of all the books.  At the library, they stamped the card, took it, and put a generic one back in its place that had the due date stamped on it.  At the bank, all I got back was my lousy booklet with this tiny total that was obviously going to take five hundred years to accrue enough money for anything, let alone a college degree.  So after just a couple of months, I started looking around for greener opportunities, which in Sunbury in the early 1960s were rare as hen’s teeth.

 

I Land The Dream Job 

In a stroke of pure luck, Ronnie Hand corralled me in Chemistry class and asked if I was interested in replacing him as stock boy and go-fer at The Bon Ton.  The store was just a couple of buildings up Market Street from Bob Newman’s.  That was okay, but it was a women’s dress shop for Christ’s sake.  I was not enthused until Ronnie told me the salary was 65¢ an hour.  Hmmm, that would be a 25% increase in salary.    (I had not yet learned that 25% of nothing was still nothing.)  So I agreed.  That very day I told Bob Newman that I was destined for greater things and was jumping ship for the chance to better my situation.  (I had not yet learned that I could’ve used the offer as leverage to get a raise where I was.)  But then, the prospect of brushing down endless rows of black top coats for the fall turnover doubled my resolve.  It was goodbye Bob Newman’s and hello Bon Ton.

The Bon Ton was a regular advertiser in the Sunbury Daily Item

The very next day, I took off from school on the double-quick and was waiting in front of The Bon Ton when Ronnie arrived at 3:30 PM.  (I had not yet learned that it’s best to pin down your new job before quitting your old one.)  I was introduced to Mrs. Stacy Brager, the owner, and two of her best salesladies:  Mrs. Schreffler and Mrs. Slack.  Everyone seemed to like me, so the deal was set.  Ronnie would work with me for one day, and then I was on my own.

The south side of west Market Street sometime in the late 1940s.  Find the sign for Jean Frocks.  Heading towards the park, the next store is Getti’s Shoes and the next The Bon Ton.

The store was long and narrow, like most of the locally owned businesses on Market Street.  Dresses down one side, casual wear, jackets, and coats down the other.  The center was a string of rectangular islands with drawers.  On top were plastic stands holding up hats, gloves, purses, and displays of handkerchiefs.  Three fourths of the way to the back, each side had three-panel, walk-in mirrors that faced an open area.  Behind that was a counter that curved to form a backwards L.  Behind that Mrs. Brager had her desk and all the tally books.  Facing out on the counter was the most ornate and biggest cash register in the world.  It had a loud bell and a very noisy receipt stamper.  Every receipt was stamped in a ritual of futility:  the stamper had been out of ink for years.

A narrow walkway alongside the office led to three small dressing rooms on each side of a narrow aisle that ended with the world’s lowest efficiency and smelliest air conditioner.  Beyond that was a kitchen of sorts with the world’s oldest working refrigerator that had a large circular set of coils on top and a capacity of about ½ cubic feet.  At the very back by the door was a stairway that led up to a mezzanine where the seamstress Mary Marx held court with her ancient pin-striped sewing machines, sergers, and a floor to ceiling collection of seamstress accouterments dating back to the invention of cloth.  Miss Marx was ancient enough to have been a young flapper back in the Jazz Age.  Sometime back then, she tried a new-fangled fingernail polish by Max Factor that caused her fingernails to pull up from her fingers.  No amount of “doctoring” helped.  Undaunted, she always painted them bright red, ending up looking like she had tiny railroad semaphores sticking up at odd angles at the ends of all ten of her fingers.

Out back was where Mrs. Brager parked her Morris Minor convertible.  There was a 55-gallon burn barrel sitting under a gigantic cherry tree.  For uncounted years, stock boys had been tossing shipping carton bands, hangers, anything metal up into the tree.  During the summer, leaves not burnt to a crisp by the burn barrel hid the ornaments.  In the winter, the weather was always so miserable, nobody ever looked up.  Legend had it that many years earlier the tree had been hit by lightning, and the tree lit up like a thousand-filament light bulb.  Everything except garbage went out of the store and into the burn barrel.  Ronnie warned me that every trash can had to be carefully searched for empty cans of hair spray.  Only once during his tenure had one gotten past him.  It went off like a hand grenade and blew burning cardboard in all directions: up onto the roof, onto Mrs. Brager’s beloved Morris, all over Ronnie, into the far upper reaches of the cherry tree.  Only quick action with a handy garden hose saved the town from burning like Chicago.

That first day, Ronnie went over how to make up boxes, how to tie them up and make a bow, how to undress the disintegrating manikins in the two windows, how to pin dresses back on the manikins without knocking loose pieces of arms or torsos, and finally how to size dresses.  This thankless task occurred when one of the sales ladies came out of the dressing rooms with arms loaded with dresses from customers.  They had to be put back on hangers and put back on the racks in exactly the right spot.  It was like wrestling with tents.

By the time Saturday rolled around, Ronnie was gone.  I worked from 9 AM to 9 PM (most definitely against the state child labor laws) in what was known as a “twelve-hour roll-over.”  I got an hour off at noon and an hour at 5 PM, and most of that time was taken up by walking home and back all the way across town.  Mrs. Brager claimed it was so I had something in my pay envelope.  Otherwise, the gross would be 8×65¢=$5.20.  Working ten hours on Saturday upped it to $11.70, which was supposed to make it all worthwhile.  At least it was better than the crappy pay I had been getting at Bob Newman’s.  Not that it mattered.  Every penny of the $10.40 net went into my college savings account.

Saturday mornings turned out to be fairly busy:  sweep the lobby and the sidewalk; clean the three-way mirrors; make up boxes; run to the drug store to pick up prescriptions; run to the Valley Bank to get fives and ones; run to Keithan’s across Market Street for iced coffee or a baked ham sandwich.  If we were busy, I wrapped and boxed dresses or sized and hung them up.  If we weren’t, I went out back and burned piles of boxes.  Everything in the store came by parcel post, so there was always a pile of them out back.  In the early spring and early fall, there were small mountains of them.  In the summer, I washed Mrs. Brager’s car.  At the worse, I just sat in a chair in the open area in front of the cash register.

On another Saturday late that summer I learned a lesson in true salesmanship.  One of Mrs. Schreffler’s “special” customers from the Pennsylvania Dutch country south of town was in for one of the new Greek knit three-piece suits.  They had just arrived two days before, and Mrs. Schreffler’s phone tree was already bringing in dividends.  Mrs. Brager could smell money and put down her crossword puzzle to see if help was needed.  As usual, the two of them disappeared into the dressing room area.  Mrs. Schreffler was soon puffing in and out, tossing dresses onto my lap and frantically sliding clothes on a rod in one of the empty bins at the back of the store.  I could hear muffled, raised voices.  Mrs. Brager shot me an “Uh-oh” look.  I laid low.

The customer came steaming out of the dressing rooms with a look like she had just swallowed a quince.  Mrs. Schreffler followed, completely hidden behind a huge pile of dresses.  I took to sizing the dresses, all of them 28 ½.

“I’m a 24 ½.  I’ve always been a 24 ½.  The dress is mis-marked.  They’re all mis-marked.  I can’t believe you’d sell such things.”

By now, Mrs. Brager was up and around the counter, admiring the dress.  “Every manufacturer has their own version of size.”  The customer looked like a giant, elongated haggis about to burst out of the pig skin.  Tension overwhelmed the back of the store.  Oxygen was escaping through every crack in the plaster.  The lights were dimming.

The customer’s lower lip went out, “I simply will NOT wear a 28 ½.”  She gave a withering look at Mrs. Schreffler and dismissed Mrs. Brager with a wave of her hand.  Round One to the customer.

Mrs. Brager had to go deep to pull this one out of the fire.  “Let me have Miss Marx look at it.”  She motioned with her head for me to head back and up the stairs.

I ran back past the dressing rooms.  “Is it okay?” I yelled from the bottom of the stairs.  (This was an inviolate safety rule to prevent my rushing up unannounced and catching a customer with her dress off while Miss Marx set a hem or whatever.)

“Yes,” came the faint reply.  I went up the stairs three at a time.  Miss Marx was already gathering her weapons.  She had heard the commotion and knew what was going down.  Miss Marx followed me downstairs carrying everything in her arsenal, including the chalk hem-marking do-hicky on its ornate, cast iron stand.  I sat down in my chair to watch what was to become known as the “ Miss Marx Fat Reducing Regimen.”

Mrs. Brager acted as producer and director and made the opening gambit:  “You’re probably right.  You know how those Greeks are.  They can never get anything right.  They make this fabulous knit cloth that you simply can’t get anywhere else and then don’t pay attention to what they’re doing with it. Just like the French.”

“You noticed that, too,” said the customer, giving Mrs. Brager an in-the-know look.  “I really DO like the dress.”  HAH!  Round Two to Team Bon Ton.  Barely.  The “quince for lunch” look immediately returned.

“You have to see how it looks in the light.  Let Mrs. Schreffler take you out back so you can see it in the sun.”  Off they went.  Mrs. Brager rolled her eyes while Miss Marx locked and loaded her chalk hem marker.  Mrs. Brager ran for a hat and pair of gloves at the front of the store.  They were back in a minute.  Mrs. Brager popped the hat on her head and forced the gloves into her hand.

Improvement!  The customer now looked like an overstuffed haggis ready for a night on the town.

It’s all-out war as the Bon Ton staff tries to wedge a customer into a dress four sizes too small for her substantial girth.

(Rendering by Richard Lytle)

Then disaster:  “I’m having trouble breathing!”  She was getting a little florid.

It was obviously time for the heavy artillery.  “Mary, would you take a look?”  Mrs. Brager stepped back as Miss Marx walked around the customer, reconnoitering the geography.  She adjusted the chalk marker and started puffing away, making short, horizontal lines all the way around the dress.  She pulled out this thin square of what looked like white soap and make slash marks over the arms and down the back.  In two minutes, the customer looked like she was on the losing end of a fencing match using white paint.  Miss Marx grabbed the chalk marker stand as if it was a baseball bat.  Mrs. Brager’s eyes popped, and her mouth opened.  Miss Marx was glaring at the customer’s butt and I’m sure was only a second away from trying to beat it into a size 24 ½.  Her eyes were glazing over.  Her semaphore hands were twitching. The customer let out a fart from being squeezed from neck to knees.  Miss Marx choked to stop from laughing, stepped back alongside Mrs. Brager, folded her arms, and totally deadpan announced, “I can fix it.  No problem.  Just an error in alignment during manufacturing.”

The customer sighed as Miss Marx stepped over and loosened things.  Her color came back along with her enthusiasm.  “I’ll take it.  Do you have others in the same style?”  Set and Match to Team Bon Ton.

After all of that, Mrs. Brager needed fuel, and I was sent yet again across the street to Keithan’s, this time for a large iced coffee.  We stayed busy for the rest of the afternoon.  When I got back at 6 PM, things had quieted down.  Mrs. Brager was back from a quick bite at the Edison Hotel.  We took up seats on either side of the office counter while she waxed philosophical.  “What a way to make a living.  I wanted to be a ballerina when I was in grade school.  Then a school teacher.  Then a high-priced lawyer.  And here I am, selling clothes in my father’s old store.  All these years.  Nothing’s changed except me.  Take my advice, kid:  don’t grow old.”

She grew quiet for a while and then snapped out of it.  “Here, I’ll teach you how to play honeymoon bridge.”  Around 8 PM she tallied up the weekly inventory sheet, counted the money and checks in the cash register, and made up the deposit.  For my last meaningful task of the day, I took the heavy deposit bag and key and fought my way through the late-evening shoppers up to the corner of 4^th and Market and put the bag into the First National Bank night deposit chute.  And that’s pretty much how all our Saturdays and weekdays went for the next two years.

 

The End of It

It took a long time and living in lot of cities to realize how important what we didn’t have was:  no robberies, no muggings, no gang fights, no drive-by shootings, no graffiti, no protesters marching down Market Street, no bums camping out in the park.  The predictability of the daily routine of living seemed endless and stifling as a kid.  Now, I see it as a sanity this country will never experience again.

And it did end.  One by one, manufacturing businesses closed, and one by one, the stores went out of business along with them.  The first to go were the locally owned ones, then the three department stores, then the two movie theaters, then everything else.  In 2017, I counted 27 empty store fronts on Market Street.  The volunteer fire companies and even churches were closing because the town had turned into one big negative cash flow.  All six grade school buildings had been turned into Section VIII housing.  The entire junior high school complex was sold to a local developer with vague plans to turn it into an assisted living facility.  The streets, curbs and sidewalks were in disrepair.  There were vacant houses everywhere.  And worst of all, almost all the trees that lined the streets were gone.

Mrs. Brager died in the spring of 1968.  The Bon Ton immediately closed and never reopened.  I ran into Miss Marx while home in 1970.  She remembered me, but started crying for the loss of Stacy Brager and the store.  In 2001 while in the area with my son on a college interview trip, I took him on a tour of Market Street.  The Bon Ton had been turned into a used junk store, with offal people rummaging through piles of crap and offal people behind the counter where Mrs. Brager held forth on those quiet Saturday evenings.  The three-way mirrors were still there, but so dirty you could hardly see yourself.  I pointed up to where the wall met the ceiling and said, “See that heavy line up there about a foot below the ceiling?  And the initials?  Stacy Brager loved to tell the story of how she climbed way up there on a ladder when she was just a kid and memorialized the 1936 flood high water mark.  Those are her initials.”

The two people behind the counter stared at us suspiciously but didn’t look up to where I was pointing.