A different viewpoint – cords and all. We don’t stress a whole lot about cords here. I mean, I try to tuck them behind objects if I can, but let’s face it, they’re an everyday reality in our lives, so why worry about them?

A magazine doesn’t live here, we do.

I’ve been thinking about bankruptcy and Sears this week. It makes me sad. Sears was such a part of my childhood years in Dearborn, Michigan. There was a Sears in Lincoln Park, which is very close to Dearborn, and we spent a lot of time there. My parents didn’t have much money and Sears could always be counted on for affordable merchandise. We went there at least once a week. When I was a little girl, I would ask my mom to take me to the doll displays and I would stand there for quite a long time, gazing up at the dolls, telling my mom and dad what dolls I wanted. When I got a bit older, I would walk to the handbag section – or purses, as we called them then. Heck, I still call them purses. I loved purses! I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to carry one.

Dad got his lawnmower and tools and ladders there. When Mom learned to sew, we would spend hours looking through patterns and fabric.

You could get anything and everything there.

And, oh, the Christmas catalog! I spent hours pouring over all the photos of toys, turning page corners, marking what I wanted (which was always a lot!) The day that catalog arrived in the mail was magical.

Mom and Dad would order things through the catalog. When they came in, we would drive to the store to visit the catalog pick-up counter.

Sears was the be-all and end-all of shopping experiences when I was a kid. There were no local branches yet of J. L. Hudson, which was the flagship department store in Detroit – that didn’t happen until the mall craze took over. (J. L. Hudson is gone now and has become another friggin’ Macy’s. Don’t get me going on that.) Anyway, J. L. Hudson was downtown and a Christmas visit to the store was a dream come true. Magical, wondrous. The downtown branch eventually suffered due to more and more people moving to the suburbs and the ups and downs of the auto industry. It closed in the 80s. In true Detroit-at-that-time fashion, years later that glorious building with wooden escalators was demolished. No more. All trace of it gone. It broke my heart.

I moved to other cities where I saw the same thing happen eventually; Wanamaker’s became Macy’s. Jordan Marsh became Macy’s. And of course, Marshall Field’s became Macy’s as well. When everything is the same wherever you go, you’ve lost a great deal.

But back to Sears. As an adult, I rarely went there. My tastes changed. But that doesn’t diminish my sadness at what has happened to that once great store, which carried everything you might need. There are Sears catalogue homes all over our country, built from designs and kits that were sold by mail order. You could order your home! Forbes called them “the American Dream that came in a box.”

The thing about the American Dream is that it sometimes fails and fades away. And we’re just left with memories.

My thoughts today.

Did you have a Sears in your life?

Happy Sunday.