And all that is now And all that is gone And all that’s to come And everything under the sun is in tune But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
— Roger Waters, “Eclipse” from Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”
The sun eclipsed by the moon, Aug. 21, 2017, Albany, Ore. Photo by Debbie Cockrell
The eclipse coincided with my birthday. I took Amtrak to Albany, Ore., the day before and fretted as the train passed Salem, Ore., and the haze/clouds seem to get. thicker. But, I did see a hint of blue sky ahead. Jim had arrived a week ahead of time for his own work, but sending me pictures of scenes around town prior to my arrival. Continue reading “One more eclipse story…”→
Our trusty drill, bought at a Sears in the 1980s. Yes, it works beautifully and has helped assemble a lifetime of furniture and inserted many nails for wall hangings.
Do you remember the Sears Wish Book? Sears does. That’s why it reintroduced it online and in print for this year. You can read more about that here.
Deep in the report, there is a prophetic quote from a Sears executive in 1989:
“The issue really isn’t success or failure,” Sears then-chairman Edward Brennan said in 1989, according to the “The Attention Merchants,” a book about media and marketing. “It’s really a question of how big a success we’re going to be.”
Take a moment to marvel at that statement. That was Sears’ outlook in 1989, as it had been probably since the turn of the century.
Skip ahead one year.
In 1990, Walmart passed Sears as the country’s largest retailer by sales, according to the WSJ piece.
People’s buying habits change. Let’s go back 40 years ago to 1977.
I’m going to make a gratuitous Pink Floyd reference here, but stay with me.
In 1977, Pink Floyd was on their “In the Flesh” (or “Animals”) tour. The tour came to Chicago. Posters were made. On that poster it lists, among ticket vendors, “Montgomery Wards” (sic) and Sears.
Sears, with everything from Pink Floyd tickets to its Wish Book catalog, was at that time, the everything store. You could say it was the Amazon of the 20th Century.
I’ve written extensively about Amazon in our life in past blog entries. But what about Sears?
We still use our Sears drill that Jim bought in the 1980s, and it works flawlessly. We bought the tires currently on our cars from Sears, and the appliances that came with our home are Kenmore. No complaints. When I was a child, I received a Sears tape recorder and it was one of my most treasured possessions — I still have recordings of my mom’s voice as a result of that machine.
How do we put a tangible value on intangible things like that from a retailer that gave you priceless memories? Things aren’t people, to be clear, but things can bring the memories of certain people back to you. And I think that’s why people still quietly root for Sears, or Kmart. You could live with or without the stores in their present-day forms, but the memories attached to them, for many people, are something else entirely.