The days of big department stores

are over it seems. There was a nostalgia piece in our state newspaper yesterday. It was written by one of our local columnists and former radio personality. He is well known for "stirring the pot" on occasions. He can be very abrupt, indeed downright rude at times but he was spot on yesterday.

He wrote about how people "dressed up to go to town". This was at a time when the central business district was also where you went shopping for anything not locally available. There were no "shopping centres" or "shopping malls". They simply did not exist. The population was very much smaller then than now.

I remember the "dressing up" bit. My mother and my grandmothers would wear "best" dresses, stockings, hats and gloves. In winter they wore wool overcoats over dresses or skirts. Mum's mother wore a corset to "hold herself in".  The Senior Cat would wear a suit. My brother wore his school blazer over a white shirt and tie. We girls were in our second best dresses rather than our Sunday dresses. Our shoes would be polished.  We would not even have questioned if we might wear our comfortable home clothes.

In the city there were "department" stores to visit. I remember them well. They each had a flavour of their own. Myers had a "bargain basement" where Mum would pick up the remnants of fabric she made her every day clothes. Just before I began at teacher training college she picked up two remnants and made me the two dresses that lasted me, along with a single winter skirt, all through my three years there. The remnants cost 95c and $1.20. The skirt, a pleated one, was "on special" at a very upmarket tailoring establishment called "Fletcher Jones". It cost $12 and last me through for nine years. I had to endure hemlines going up and down!

David Jones was considered more "classy". They had someone playing the piano near the books on the ground floor and haberdashery was hidden on the sixth adjacent to the auditorium where the Book Week display would be held.

John Martin's had the Christmas Pageant. We knew about that but we were never in the city to see Santa Claus arrive behind all the floats. It was not until we were adults that we went to see it - or watch children watching it. I went once with Ms Whirlwind and several of her classmates. It was enough. 

There was Cox Foy's which had a sort of fun fair on the roof. In all the years it was there I never ventured that far. I did not like the basement of Harris Scarfe's. It felt as if it was going to fall in on me.  They were along the same street which has now become a pedestrian mall. The buses no longer travel along it. You are much more likely to be hit by someone illegally riding a skateboard. 

There was the Arcade with the only restaurant I ever ate in as a child and the lane which led to the main bookshop which published our school text books and the place which sold the "pineapple crush" drinks we were allowed to have just that once on a very hot day. 

All of those things are long gone. Myers and David Jones are now filled with tiny areas that sell individual brand names. John Martin's and Cox Foy's no longer exist. They have gone along with Miller Anderson's, Moore's on the Square and Peoplestore's. 

I am not sure we are any better off now. The big shopping malls seem soulless to me. I traverse them reluctantly wearing jeans. I don't own a dress and I have no dress up sort of gloves or a dress up hat. Stockings? Please do not mention them!