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Thank you This is a WYES TV production New Orleans was the shopping mecca of the South.

I mean, people from all over South Atlanta, all of Mississippi, all of the neighboring states, we come to New Orleans.

Any other place they want to tell you how much they paid for it in New Orleans.

They won't tell you how they got it, which is completely reverse way of thinking.

I remember going with my mother when I was a little boy to Canal Street, few white gloves.

And at that booth de rigueur on Canal Street.

See, people used to come here from the country, people to come into New Orleans, from the surrounding areas.

And Rap.

Wall Street will be so crowded.

Look like you would walk into a fashion show, you know, because the guys would be really dressed up with nice, tailor made clothes, you know, that came from those all those little tailor shops.

I was a little girl, and my happiest memory of being in fragments always was directly tied into the Hubig's pie that I ate.

Tear gas keep me occupied and quiet as I sat in that little part of the basket I'm Peggy Scott Laborde.

Whether for everyday needs or special occasions.

Memories of shopping in New Orleans are part of our history.

The grittiness of South Rampart Street.

The grandeur of Canal Street.

And B. K. B.

And we mustn't forget Wegmans.

In the next hour, we'll look back at some of the stores with their merchandise and memories, all part of where New Orleans shopped D.H. Holmes.

Mason, Blanche Gauchos.

Gus.

Myra Krieger's.

Each one, a favorite store with its own particular style and film life is make and all located on the Boulevard of Laurel and Shopping Canal Street down town.

Back when a mall was little more than a concept.

Canal Street offers both convenience and a comprehensive selection of stores.

Oh, the stores on Canal Street were fabulous because they were within a 23 blocks compact.

They sell Polish homes, gauchos, kazmaier, krieger's, gold rings all there in two blocks, but they had shoe stores and other specialty stores at Kelly's and her four shoes.

The Imperial Shoe Store.

You had the first of the chain's Allen store bakers, and then you had a level of stores where if you couldn't quite afford a fancy dress from one of the department stores, there was Mangles and three sisters.

Mayfair lauds a nice little level of stores that would allow you to put things in layaway.

All you can ask me was, was, was the big thing where we went in the wall.

Wait, my aunt used to wait for grants?

I would like to go to Africa.

Every time I went there, she sent me home with a dozen donuts or something, you know, and you go to the back counter, you can eat hot dogs and shakes and all that kind of stuff that Alexander got yours.

But I never go to because that was just out of my league, you know?

So we didn't buy in other places.

That was too, that's too much.

But they went anyway, pretty, you know, at a time when things were less expensive and the world a little safer for many New Orleanians, a Canal Street shopping spree provided an early opportunity to spread their wings for $0.75 three days a week.

My mother had me completely out of her hair.

I would take $0.07 to take the bus from the Ninth Ward, go all the way to Canal Street, buy a nickel coke and a nickel candy bar, walk over to visit my aunts in the department stores and $0.07 home with a penny change.

Can you imagine that?

What a wonderful growing up movie you cast The Streetcar, which ran on the South ramp.

Wall Street took a nasty streak off of $0.07.

You would get a Hershey bar for a nickel, you see.

So you've got a quarter, you know, you get a 12 miles drink for a nickel.

If you save a quarter, you save money you could go to an everlasting bakery and get you a pint of white milk and two donuts, you know?

Well, the first time I went to Canal Street by myself, I went to Woolworth's and I bought Blue Walls perfume.

Oh, I remember that.

You know, in the little heart shaped bottle, it was just great to be on myself not having my mother hold my hand when I was a little kid during World War Two.

And we went up there and as we were walking past the old Jam Oyster Bar, my mother would let me buy piles of oysters and then walk down the street by myself.

At night, should walk in, and she'd say, George is going to eat a lot of oysters.

Give him as many as he wants.

How much an oyster cost in those days?

I don't know.

It must've been $0.25 for two dozen or something.

I don't know.

And she'd come in later and she'd say, How many did he eat?

They say he ate seven dozen oysters.

Oh, here to pay it.

But then I'd wander off onto Canal Street and I'd say hello to all the policemen and, and stop and talk to the newspaper man and such as that.

So it was obviously a great deal.

Save the first trip I took to Canal Street when I was first allowed to go on my own, my friend Rick Miller, I was told strictly that I could go to Canal Street, but I couldn't go into that French Quarter, which was great advice because it would have taken me much longer to find it.

My mother hadn't pointed it out to me, and of course, if we went on our own, we would go into the stores and many of the same stores, but we'd pretty much make brats out of ourselves.

It was like sixth grade before my mother would let us go to canals.

You know, they would say, Don't go down to the end, can't go past certain.

And Freddie Parmesan would because of him and his mother would say, You can't go back to Georgia.

It's like both sides, both on the other end was bad for you.

And the interesting thing is I lived in the Ninth Ward.

So if you went to Canal Street you were going downtown, even though you were literally going uptown.

It was the beginning of being an adult, you know, and you didn't have anybody telling you what to do.

Or the place to begin a shopping expedition was under the clock in front of D.H. Ohmes Department Store in Jean Kennedy Tools Novel The Confederacy, of Dunces.

The irascible Ignatius Riley stands impatiently under the clock, waiting for his mother.

Generations waited there and watched as fellow shoppers scurried by in pursuit of the next purchase.

Standing under the clock at Holmes's, it was never just homes plural, cause that way.

Everybody who was anybody who knew Holmes said it was Holmes's.

And you'd go there to meet friends and everybody knew where that was.

Even though Gotcha was across the street.

Also had a clock at Adler's had their clock still does have their clock, but the clock of Canal Street was the clock at Holmes's.

It was the place I had to meet my mother or get in trouble when at the end of the day it was also handy because the time was given by the clock so every shopping trip started and ended at the H. Holmes, Daniel Henry Holmes opened his emporium in 1849 and for almost a century and a half, local shoppers felt that there was no place like Holmes.

D.H. Holmes always.

He had the reputation of being the find this department store in New Orleans.

I can remember my grandmother, Ada Noonan, I can remember her talking about and her youth, D.H. Holmes.

I mean, everything was there to Holmes.

It was really uptown.

Holmes was reputed to be the first store in the country to offer home delivery.

It also had a policy that it would take back any purchase, imagine anything back and useful, you know, credit for it might say, man, Florence said, I wish I had got my husband.

I could have brought him back yeah, they didn't.

So men came in once with a flannel shirt and they asked me the reason for bringing it back.

And I said, Well, this is a tartan that was worn by a family that has been at war with my family for over 150 years.

The lady looked at me and said, I'll just put it down.

It's the wrong color.

And later, when I worked at Holmes I actually began to believe that that whoever took in the most return merchandise was going to get a free washer dryer at the end of the year because they were very open about accepting anything at homes and other stores.

Waiting on customers was more than lip service.

Some clerks were as much a draw as the merchandise.

The fragrance, ladies and cosmetic ladies were the celebrity greeters in every store.

They had beautiful personalities, wonderful style.

You definitely had your special ladies that you could visit, even down to visiting a little, visiting them with a little treat.

And if you were really good friends with them, maybe you got invited to the employee cafeteria at Holmes for a Coke elevator.

Operators operated elevators and called the floors ladies lingerie hats and they did that.

You know, you it's gone.

It's an era that's gone from your head.

Working in the men's department presumed a certain knowledge of fashion trends.

I spent most of my time at Holmes that the one in the Oakwood Shopping Center and for some reason people would come in.

And despite the way I was dressed, I think that I knew more about fashion than they did.

So they'd ask advice.

And I usually ended up in the midst of a fight between the husband and wife.

The husband wanted a cotton shirt with two pockets that would button the wife wanted him to get one of the new popular slippery looking shirts, as we call them, made out of polyester that looked OK on John Travolta, but probably wasn't going to compliment her husband let's do it.

I also earned a fair proportion of my University of New Orleans tuition selling leisure suits to people on the West Bank or fact for which I'm probably still resented over there.

Even with the sweetest of intentions, the service could have a potentially disastrous effect when I was in high school, I would work for homes on what they called the flying squad.

And so you'd be an hour.

This person's lunch, it'd be relief help, right?

They didn't train so you just had to pop in and act smart.

So I was working in the Candy Department one day.

Oh, heavens, high school and with a sweet tooth.

So somebody wanted to buy Alman Bach.

I'll never forget this.

And I put it in a little box for and took her money, whatever else.

And she came back about 5 minutes later because she had taken a nibble, and I had given her the plastic almond bark.

I didn't know what was display and what was stock, and she cracked her dentures.

I feared for loss of my job I'll never forget the last time I left D.H. Holmes when they were going away, I cried going down that escalator because I knew that that was a special department store experience that in many levels, from the buyer to the the ultimate customer was never going to really be there anymore.

A special invitation from Tommy Gojo to view the newest fashions highlighting the gala social season for home entertaining gauchos, founded by Leon Gaucho in the 1840s, was considered one of the city's most fashionable clothing stores.

And what they did was the most fabulous fashion show.

They did it every August, and they would close the store while the store was closed on a Sunday, do all the fittings on all seven floors, show over a hundred ensembles with shoes, hats, everything.

I remember one dress, I think I got it from God shows.

It was a dotted Swiss dress that was in vogue.

Then my mother was in with me and I was a little bit afraid she was going to say I paid too much for it.

I had the credit card, but when I brought it home, she liked it.

What made stores on Canal Street, such as Gus Meyer special, was the service designed to make wishes come true.

You know, in those days in the in the fifties, little girls, we always had the skirts, you know, and the skirts that went like this very stiff.

And the skirts had a great proclivity to turn up at the hem.

And I don't know where this came from.

If it came out of her head just but my great grandmother would say, Poppy, your hems turned up quick.

Turn it over and give it a kiss.

Make a wish and wish for a new dress.

And I bet you'll get one.

So I would do like she said.

And that afternoon, the doorbell would ring and there would be that dapper uniform from deliveryman from Gus Meyer with one of those yellow and green boxes under his arm with a brand new dress in it.

It was like having a fairy godmother because Meyer helped New Orleans fascination with fur prompted purchases inspired more by style than practicality.

Gold rings was had furs.

They always had them in the window.

And I got a fabulous fur on sale, and it was rabbit and it was Red Stripe, and then a green stripe and then a big piece of white, then a red and green.

And this is what it was like.

I loved that coat cos my ears always smelled like my father's this is if you think of a foreign, you smell it.

It's.

I don't know what it is.

It's a good smell.

It's a, it's a nice smell.

It's a healthy smell.

And I think as you walked in the front door, you could just smell the goodness of it.

It's so strange to think of New Orleans people wearing all that fur, isn't it?

It's hard to believe.

I can remember I bought my mother a big Persian lamb's overcoat, one time gorgeous coat with a big black fur collar and I thought it was nice.

I thought years later that was awful nice of her not to scream when I brought that to her.

If wearing fur in the sweltering New Orleans climates, seemed out of place, not so for a beloved little figure made from that rarest of Crescent City commodities snow.

Mr. Bingo am be a god.

It was the spokesperson for Maison Blanche.

Mr. Bingo was a little character who represented Christmas.

He was white and furry and little red eyes, visited hospitals and visited orphanages and was featured in the Maison Blanche Christmas window every year.

Oh, yes.

My father used to drive us many nights during the Christmas season.

To see Mr. Bango at night.

He drive, park and wait in the car and we go out to the showcase and and look at Mr. Bingle and listen to his presentation Jingle jangle, jingle.

Here comes Mr. Bingle with their message from Kris Kringle.

Mr. Bingle was great because it meant Christmas was coming.

Nice little jingle to go along with him at the end of Christmas.

You'd always see Mr. Bingle laying in Canal Street, and it was vaguely reminiscent of the last scene from the King Kong movie where he'd been shot down.

Mr. Behnke was actually a show where they had they had a live puppet show.

Hi.

Look in his, you know, marionette show.

Yeah, it was fabulous.

And and, you know, all those windows, there's nothing like it anymore.

I mean, those windows were fabulous on Canal Street.

Many downtown store windows were exquisitely decorated.

Each year, D.H. Holmes's windows were decked out with a different theme Krieger's Department Store was a Canal Street landmark from the 1870s.

Before embarking on an art career, George Darrow was in charge of advertising there.

He started out designing the store's windows.

Mr. Krieger comes down and says, George, your windows will be in on Monday, right?

I said, My windows will be in on Monday.

He said, The Christmas windows the Christmas windows, what does that mean?

And all of a sudden I realized I didn't know it.

Christmas windows.

I had not bought any props.

I had not done any such thing.

Is that right?

I covered them completely in red paper and then carved out beautiful baroque edges so that you had wooden frame.

Then you had baroque edges that painted all of that gold around there and then made it very intense, like dark, dark red in the background.

And then the women dressed in beautiful, expensive clothes.

The windows were a great success and it cost them all of $10 a Sunday instead of the usual 10 million.

What happened was certain places like Rubens did and other, they thought I was a regular genius doing those windows, but they didn't know that they were costing nothing.

It was Mr. George was bringing that from school up in Baton Rouge had come down with the knowledge of how to paint on paper in a big way was how one downtown store decorated for the holidays right off Canal Street, a jolly red giant could be seen in front of Sears.

Oh, I could really remember, Sears, insisted giant Santa Claus they would have at Christmas time.

I think it went from the top of the front door, all the way up to the roof of the building.

It was enormous.

Christmas was also a time to demonstrate the difference between national and local attitudes towards employee social activities.

As Keith Hurd observed by working at both Sears and Homes I remember Christmas that at Sears they gave us fried chicken on Christmas Eve, along with some potato salad and at homes.

They gave us food but every department had their own little bar set up.

We had one gentleman in the men's department who had had too much to drink, and it was no problem.

They just let him go on home early he was gone for about 25 minutes and then he came back.

His wife said she didn't want him home in that condition.

He sent him back to work and so he finished out his shift in New Orleans, storeowners don't have to worry about a lull after Christmas.

There's Mardi Gras.

With the season comes shoppers just think of that.

While other cities are dealing with returns, we're dealing with our second best selling season and we're dealing with it in a quick hurry.

We've got to get the gowns and get them fitted.

Everyone needs more than one gown.

I think one thing that might be different in New Orleans in other parts of the country is that in New Orleans, someone who doesn't own a single business suit is still likely to have a full set of tails.

I think Carnival also probably puts a premium on closet space because you have somewhere to store the 15 or 20 costumes that you know you're going to have to wear again or simply can't throw out for carnival season accessories and much more, Krauss department store was considered an anchor at the Basin Street end of Canal Street.

I needed go LeMay long opera gloves for a gown I was wearing to a Mardi Gras ball.

I couldn't find Golden Gloves.

I couldn't find Golden Gloves.

I couldn't find them.

I had to buy a hat for some reason.

And I happened to pass through crowds to go upstairs to purchase the hat, and I passed the gloves.

There was Golden May Opera Gloves, which really proves that Kraus had everything within crowds.

There were some unforgettable features across the wooden floor, the escalator, the tube system for the bills.

Oh, if I could have one thing in my store, it would be that vacuum tube system.

It was great.

And the fabric department fabric was a big thing because so many of the ladies home sewed after the war I was going to now, like, eight years old.

Well, see, plus, I had a C-plus living right next door to me.

I mean, if you ever run out of things, you might run out of hooks up whatever he ran out of, he'd call me maybe summertime, and I'd be out of school, so she'd call me.

Come on, you've got to go to crowds for me.

You got to go to crowds.

The people in the notion store knew me by name.

I went be so.

But she said, go outside and fix yourself.

I have no shoes on.

It's up there.

Go wash yourself off a little bit because you got to go to crowds for me that I go inside, wipe off a little bit, put on my shoes, you know, don't a crowd.

But Krauss was really a great friend because I think crowds wanted a voice wanted in store that let blacks trial and stuff so I can't say enough about crowds as you can tell.

I hate to see him, you know, go out.

Canal Street has also served as a barometer for social change.

It was always a practice in our house before we went out, before we went shopping, before we went anywhere, we had to be sure we had enough to eat.

And we went to the bathroom because there were so many places that were not open to us.

My mother carried a little collapsible aluminum cup because we would never drink from the water fountains if we passed like the white fountains, she'd just stop there, open her purse, flip out her little collapsible cup, opened it up, get water, and we drink water like that.

You know, during the early 1960s, there were a sit ins and boycotts by the NAACP, Youth Council and other groups.

They protested the lack of public facilities and lobbied for better job opportunities was for about a year that the stores were picketed.

We we didn't we didn't go.

I guess it was only when they began to hire salespersons that we felt that, you know, well, we're a part of this now.

Fashion forecast in color as the jobs present the international American designs at home anywhere in the world.

For many of us, shopping memories are often associated with buying clothes.

A city of rituals in New Orleans.

Dressing up is as much a part of who we are as carnival and Catholicism.

So when you went to Canal Street to shop, you dressed to go to Canal Street.

You wouldn't go like care slacks in a sloppy whatever and, you know, leave your house doing work around the house.

I wouldn't.

But nonetheless, because my particular has been going to the grocery store, my aunt Florence said that when ladies stop wearing hats and gloves to go to Canal Street, when she stopped going, it was a big deal.

You had to get dressed up.

And it was always a problem because if you were a kid, you always had to wear like a coat or something, no matter how warm it was.

And you could cry but your mother would not let you take off the coat because you would lose it.

I had been pretty well dressed since I was a little kid.

Not not fancy, but very, very tailored, mannish looking suit.

Even though I was 14 years old.

Well, I bought clothes regularly at Terry and Judy, and I had them make for me.

A double breasted khaki suit had never been made before in the history of the world.

Right.

Tradition and climate have inspired a basic New Orleans male wardrobe as distinctive as our food and architecture I suppose a seersucker suit, preferably machine washable, the standard khaki cotton suit, the green and tan khaki both again, machine washable and white linen is as comfortable as you can get if you've got to wear long pants and a jacket in a New Orleans summer.

I do have a friend, Reed Mitchell, and he taught up north, and when he wore his seersucker at sometimes excited comments and he would defend himself by pointing out that it was his colorful native garb and that they should respect him for that I got drafted into the Army and all of the majors and lieutenants that were in that company that I was in up there.

They all lined up one day and I said, Oh, sorry, I took my class.

It's a mess.

I said, Don't worry about whether it's a mess.

Open his closet.

And then they sat there and talked about the clothing I had said seersucker they had never seen before in their lives.

Right.

And a white linen suit they couldn't imagine.

I dragged all those clothes up with me to to Indianapolis.

Men in New Orleans are used to wearing tights I actually had a young man staying with me.

He was passing through with a visitor and I was going to a Halloween party.

So I was putting on a costume and I had something laid out for him.

I think it was a jester costume.

And as I walked in, he was holding a tights up, looking very puzzled, and it suddenly dawned on me he must have been in his early twenties.

He was almost a grown man and he'd never worn tights.

He obviously wasn't from here.

Whether buying clothes for work or play economic necessity could inspire inventive strategies for getting just the right look.

When I first started working for Holmes in the sixties, I was just in high school.

I was making $0.90 an hour.

I had to provide myself with black, brown, navy, gray or dark green dress or suit with shoes, with sleeves, high heels and hose every day.

So if you couldn't afford to buy something in the store, you worked for, you would put together a wardrobe in one of the less expensive stores, or perhaps make your own because many of the stores had fabric departments and the big thing was to be able to make a dress for a dollar and of course, find a tension zipper to go in it.

You could do that back then.

A few blocks away on South Rampart Street, tailor shops abounded for a clientele hooked on fashion Rampart provided a stage to strut your stuff, and the guys that hung around South Rampart, we always on a Fridays and Saturdays, they would dress up and just hang out on the street.

If you stood out there with those guys, you didn't stand out there in jeans and all raggedy run down shoes, and they would have all kinds they see Adams on every claps you yelled nice tailor made pants and garbage, these pants and silk sheets and straw hats, you know, as brocade is, they had their finest on out there and every hour standing up, talking to each other.

You know, just I guess that was a float.

You see what a neighborhood you see a neighborhood with a selection of stores as diverse as the population.

Sarandos parents ran a grocery store and sandwich shop on Rampart most of the clientele was black, but most of the the merchants were white.

And it was a truly mixed community.

And it was a bustling place.

Everywhere you look, there was something going on much of that energy came from Russian-Jewish immigrants who opened stores using skills learned in their mother country.

The father of Jules and Albert, pestis arrived in New Orleans in the 1920s and opened a cap and tailor shop in the Bronx that we were in.

They must have had at least 20 tailor shops at least on both sides of both sides of the street.

The street was always jam packed.

Our street was a canal street for our clientele, mostly black people, our clientele, and they were good, good customers.

And we saw some of the finest clothes because we were able to people were just dolls and they were the best dressed people best friends that time you know, they did tailor made clothes on ramp Wall Street and they had a pair of pants out there called drapes, which was very tight at the bottom.

And ballooned in the middle.

Back in the forties, they had a thing really they call the zoot suit.

A lot of zoot suit was made on Rampart.

You guys a very long coat, blousy pants and tight, you know, and the guys would out in big hats, stuff like that.

Gala Zoot to them, I'd have a chain hanging on it and it would swing the chain, you know, wrap the very, very busy street all day, every day.

Like a more laid back version of Bourbon Street Barkers.

Rampart Street merchants worked hard to cajole potential customers into making a purchase.

You'd stand out and you'd say, Hey, man, it looks like you could use another pair of shoes, you know, how about coming and get a zoot suit made?

You know, anything like that, it would get people to come in.

Well, you'd see somebody would stop by the window and look in the window and of course, you'd go around in front of them and block them so they couldn't walk away and talk to them and eventually get them into the store and buy a pair of shoes from you.

But everybody did that in every business, whether it was a shoe business, a clothing business or whatever, working hand in glove with tailor shops on Rampart Street.

Was another type of business, one that allowed fashion plates to recycle style if need be.

The well-dressed man could use his wardrobe as collateral for more clothes and more days.

You could get a good tailor made suit and pawn it and in part for money, where you couldn't put on a ready made suit.

Already made suit was just a ready made suit.

But a tailor made suit would bring him a good point value and a good pair of Florsheim shoes.

You could pawn a good Stetson hat.

You could find but you couldn't find a readymade suit or a ready made cheap hat.

You can have anything, anything of value shoes, suits, hats, and guys did that, you know, they go in hock, watches, rings, wedding rings, you know, all that just to get a few dollars until he got you know, they got paid or something.

That was like a loan, a quick loan.

There were a number of other stores along that area, including Crackerjack Drugstore, I used to go in there, but I. I just thought of it as a drugstore, but I've heard a lot of stories that it was a real haven for voodoo while tales of Voodoo in New Orleans all too often lapse into folklore, the crackerjack drugstore offered the real deal.

You're actually going to Crackerjack Drugstore and buy out, you know, candy, baby roof, bars and stuff like that.

But they also sold out what some people would call Gregorys.

You know, they sell a lucky oil love out for your wife and their girlfriends and stuff like that.

They saw voodoo part of voodoo.

She can feed a lot of stuff that people believe in them days.

And a lot of people thought that they'd go there for to make them virile.

You know, that would make them big men, you know, so they bought a different potions of stuff that they made.

They mixed their own, made their own powders and stuff in their medicines and medicines to herbs and stuff.

And it was a pretty potent stuff.

Further uptown was dry.

It's street clothing and shoe stores carry merchandise for the entire family.

For many years, Herb Halperin's father ran a fabric store and riots in Riot Street.

In those days, this is I'm talking about the middle forties the late forties was always busy.

It was one of the grandest streets in the city, also probably one of the most non segregated areas in town, which was the it was a mixed, mostly Jewish and black community.

It was it was always packed.

And if you wanted something good and something different, you would go to try it.

Street Growing up just around the corner on Saint Charles Avenue, novelist Anne Rice and her mother and sisters bought their groceries and shop for clothes on Dry Street.

We shopped at a big store called Kauffman's On Drive.

We used to go there seeking bargains.

It was a good place to find good cotton dresses and things like that.

And she would also go to A&P and we had to carry those groceries home for empty.

That was good for me, and that was quite a walk.

But we did.

And we we carried all those bargains home to great big brown bags of peas, but we made it drives was sort of one step up from Rampart, which was a lot more guys sitting in front of their stores.

Come on.

And you want a blue suit, I'll get you a blue suit.

That that kind of a place.

This was the big store there.

And then there was the famous Cinderella shoe store.

And a lot of my high school buddies used to work there.

My recollection of riots is to get shoes, and I don't know if it was Red Goose or Buster Brown or something.

And there was this machine that you would stand on and it would X-ray your foot you know, when you find shoes.

And it was like, what is this?

Later on, the American Medical Association, stop that.

That was so much fun running there and would put our little feet under the x ray machine.

We could see all the bones in our feet.

In addition to selling children's clothing, one dried street store also prided itself on its costume selection.

I remember going to the Joanne Shop on Dried Street for Mardi Gras costumes and Halloween costumes, and it was crammed full of costumes and costume boxes, and they were everywhere.

And of course, I never knew the shop owners.

I was just a little girl.

I remember them seeming like a little old sort of know me people.

They were like, right in fitting with the whole match.

Element of this costume you were going to go acquire there.

Halpern's fabrics offered merchandise suitable for royalty.

Asking to describe how things would be like asked into this drab Buckingham Palace, where would you start?

You know, it was absolutely breathtaking.

Gold and silver and and reds and greens.

And you just wish you could have a dress made out of every type of material there Changing venues and rising costs were constant challenges in the retail world.

What happened was in the early fifties, my father lost his lease on Dry and Street, and he couldn't find another spot on Dry Street because Start Street in those days was really the Grand Avenue.

He says, I'm just not going to stay in business.

This is terrible.

This is the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

I'm going to move to Saint Charles and oh, terrible, terrible.

I don't know, how are we going to do it?

The other major, major factor that he thought that we had to go out, he was going to go out of business is what thread went up from $0.05 a spool to $0.15 a spool.

He says it will never sell at that price, never moving to Saint Charles.

Halpern became part of a street of higher end stores that were as grand as the avenue on which there were located in 1964th July 1964.

I was in Paris.

I had my 25th birthday party at Maxine's and I had some friends and they were shopping in Paris.

I didn't purchase one thing I said to Linda and Waiter and the family.

I said, you don't have to buy anything over here.

It's all on sale.

Charles Avenue.

Saint Charles Avenue was once home to numerous elegant boutiques and gift shops.

Well, Saint Charles Avenue became the first boutique area when boutiques came about in America in the sixties, and Chelsea was happening in London and the first boutique in New Orleans was a wonderful, wonderful store that the Pipe Sisters and their mom had on Saint Charles Avenue in an old house.

And it was a Papa Dollar store, but they had wonderful rustling taffeta skirts and sashes and hair ornaments.

And you had top drawer for Men, which was a wonderful boutique type shopping experience for men.

We attended the Washington Mardi Gras ball for 25 years.

And so every year that's where I would go buy three of the gowns, and sometimes even the girls were purple, green and gold to make it for the Washington Ballet grabber.

But everything came from those stores.

While most of the shops concentrated on women's clothing, there was one place where mothers could find something special for their little ones, like the Lilian shops for beautiful, beautiful, handmade children's clothes from infant on up to quit paying for lace on your baby boys and they sold nightgowns for mommy for the hospital and beautiful baby gifts.

And it was sort of a Shirley Temple venue the way it was set up, lace and baby gifts eventually gave way to khaki and wall.

When the children grew up, many would attend Catholic schools where the question of What shall I wear was conveniently answered the school uniform.

And other than the ones that we bought at Minions on Saint Charles Avenue, we would go to the Broadmoor Kiddy Shop that was owned by these two elderly ladies, the sisters, the real sisters.

So everybody, the Catholic school system knew about the Royal Sisters, and we would go there and get up by our blue skirts and our white blouses and everything pertaining to go to Catholic school, back to school clothes.

You know, it was always, always the Broadmoor Kiddy Shop because I'm an Ursuline girl.

And that's where Ursuline girls got their uniforms.

It would always be hot.

It was it's always hard, but it would be extra hot when we were putting on this scratchy wool skirts and getting measured to make sure that the length was just correct.

The big thing, you'd have to kneel down to make sure because the rule was that the skirt had to touch the ground when you were kneeling.

But kids kept their school uniforms.

Like like when I went to Dominican, some girls were still wearing the same blue skirt, you know, at the end.

And then, you know, some of them had sisters that came.

And it was like sometimes if they could, they gave them to them.

Uniforms are kind of interesting.

I shopped for them when I was very young, and of course, we were rather poor.

So for 90 days, my mother would use the Sears layaway plan, and in June we would buy the uniform blouses, the undershirts, whatever I needed, the saddle oxfords and just hope I didn't grow or gain more weight during the summer.

And when I got to Cabrini High School, the nuns actually made our skirts.

In fact, I did something for the nuns years ago.

They were changing their habit and so they came and asked my opinion on where they should go from here, from wearing these big things.

To something modified.

And I came a couple of ideas, and they did it themselves.

If you were looking for $1,000,000 Baby and a five and ten cent store, you had quite the choice of establishments on Canal Street, including a McCrory's Chris Christie grants and not one but two Woolworth's.

Oh, yes, a dime store as well, where we stopped on the way home from school but there were things that you could only get at the dime stores, you know, like pins and needles and thread and those kinds of basic things.

Our Woolworth was like a that was a wonderland wonderland.

Yeah.

The Big Woolworth's, as opposed to the small Woolworth.

Big Woolworth's was on Rampart Street.

The small Woolworth's was on Bourbon Street, but the big Wool And that was one of the stories, right?

There was one store that you could go with your whole family, and that was one store where my parents would say, OK, well, y'all go do what you want and we're going to do what we want and we can all meet because it was something for the kids.

It was great toys.

And and they were cheap, too, which meant a lot.

And cosmetics and perfume, you know, that kind of the that you could get, you know, it was cheap.

The Woolworth's that are real Ali was familiar with and liked was on the corner of Rampart and Canal.

And as you walked in was the bakery.

It was the best bakery in town until it closed.

In fact, I remember that's where my 18th birthday cake came from.

My daddy I guess, was really a gosh ding when he was a little boy, his mother and his grandmother and he all lived together uptown and the chauffeur would bring Daddy to school and pick him up after school.

And he looked forward to Fridays tremendously because he knew that the chauffeur was coming with his allowance for the week and he would take him straight to T, G and Y.

That was where Daddy would go and blow the week's allowance on model airplanes, usually to build that weekend.

And it wasn't until he was in high school, he told me that he found out that t g and why did not stand for toys, guns and yo yos.

That's what he always thought that meant.

In addition to the toy department, another place providing fascination for young ones was the pet department there was a Woolworth's on Oak Street, and I'd have no idea what I was in there for, but my son spotted a little turtle just slightly larger than a silver dog, you know, I guess a silver dollar.

And we already had a dog.

We had two parakeets.

I don't know what else I had in the house, but my son fell in love with the little turtle.

And I remember asking the sales lady, How long will this thing last?

So she says, About six weeks.

I said, Six weeks.

I can stand we brought that turtle home and my son named it, took it for walks up and down the sidewalk.

That turtle lasted for almost two years and would eat nothing except flies that I would have to catch from the dog's food back yard if.

But that's what I remember Woolworth's on Oak Street because that's where I got Grover the turtle long after one dime store pet department had closed.

There were still living proof of its existence.

The McCoys, when it closed, it still had parakeets know they got out and they never got them money.

And sometimes music was in the air at local dime stores.

I remember as if it were yesterday, there was an organist that played the organ while you shopped, and it was a great adventure.

You want to go in just to hear the music.

Every child must have a door that you just run around the store and, you know, I guess you grab a dub over all the stuff in this door and all the dancing to the music.

But the big, big organ would play.

And sometimes they were sometimes they were seasonal like Christmas things or Easter or something.

But most of the time I think that they were watered down or watered up things from Broadway.

Things were a nickel, a dime and a quarter.

They weren't anything.

I mean, you didn't spend a dollar there on one item.

It just didn't happen long before Wal-Mart, K-Mart, our target there was Wegmans Brothers, Giant Supermarkets, or just shoe segments.

If they didn't carry the item you were looking for, you probably didn't need it.

I remember going into Wegmans on a regular basis with my mother and it being such a bustling place between them serving food in one end in the bank and going on and just the huge, huge department you could get everything bigger ultimately started adding appliances and other items that you find now in these giant supermarkets.

But they were considered our supermarkets.

The man behind this concept of one stop shopping John Sugarman, was larger than life, but also a man of the people.

He was eccentric, but nonetheless, he was a brilliant man, a marketing genius.

Said what he believed in, didn't care a hoot who liked it, didn't like it.

If he had an opinion about something, he said it and he wanted to make certain that everybody got a good price for their products and a place that they could go, that everybody could afford to buy groceries my father came up with a lot of firsts and innovative ways of merchandizing.

We might have been the first or one of the first in the country to do was to locate a bank in bank branches in our stores so the customer could literally take the roller basket and roll it right into the into the bank and and have the buggy by his or her side while conducting business with the teller.

The first giant supermarket was located on the corner of Saint Claude and Elysian Fields, one of the most popular locations was the airline store where Comfort took a back seat to bargains.

It was of a design that of a Quonset hut like a round roof building that that was typical in the in the military back at that time.

It was built very inexpensively.

It did not have paid parking initially.

It did not have air conditioning.

I remember my father one day related a story where a customer approached him and said, it sure is sure is hot in this place, Mr. Schweitzer.

And he would say, well, so are the prices so are the prices.

Other innovations included gas stations in front of his stores, a drugstore within the store a seafood market and a sporting goods store.

And that was like the first big superstore in the city.

They had a drugstore in it that was like unheard of.

Right.

I bought my first shotgun fragments.

I used to bring visitors to shoe segments just to show them the stores.

I ate lunch at Wegmans.

I had had at least one beer and the fragments bar.

We had a small chain of bar rooms, maybe like maybe five or six you could buy a highball for four $0.25.

And it was a good it was a good stiff drink, you know, I mean, wasn't anything watered down, I guess some of the husbands didn't.

That's right.

Waited for the wife, had a couple of drinks and drove up my alley that there was one time and the husband said, That's fine, go shop, go shop, that's fine.

It was a New Orleans store.

It was a New Orleans experience.

I used to love to have someone from out of town take them to the showgrounds and go shopping and buy a 25 cent schwag and banned brand beer in the front of the store.

They would always, always just they would marvel at that.

You could also get one of the best hot sausage ball boys in the city at the Wegmans, particularly the one on Saint Claude.

When we were going hunting or fishing, we'd stop and get our equipment.

I trackman if you wanted to buy squid, they had squid in fragments.

They sold it in the sporting goods section, but it was it was fine.

Frozen squid forever.

You wanted whatever you wanted to use it for.

You knew you were going to get chicory coffee.

You know you can buy rabbits, you know you could get if you wanted it.

The eggs of speckled trout, which they sold as caviar.

They had crawfish, they had crabs.

They boiled them.

They did a good job.

Schwendeman ran for governor twice and served as a state representative and public service commissioner.

He routinely printed his political beliefs both in newspaper ads and on the side of the stores.

Shopping bags.

He'd put slogans and support people.

If you got a swag bag and you were running for political office, that was pretty good.

You got some great distribution.

Through the years, locals found the weapons bags could carry much more than groceries.

If somebody was going to run away from home, you'd pack your clothes in a schwag bag, or if you're going to put somebody out, I'm going to pack all your things and put them in a swag bag and put you out.

So bags, so my dad didn't necessarily want to try to conquer the world.

And there there are people like that out there.

But I think he I think he did want to conquer a little part of the world.

You know, you know, South Louisiana, particularly Metropolitan New Orleans, and that he he enjoyed championing the cause of the consumer.

You can do good and do well.

You know, at the same time, I think if it's if it's done properly, look on almost any corner and then what do you see?

A big purple sign.

It says friendly K and B, K and B, OK, B's was one of the few drug stores you'd ever go to.

There was one everywhere, everywhere in New Orleans and six other states, a total of 186 stores that inspired a faithful following, especially from the New Orleans community.

Our general public was not any specific segment of the public, but it was everybody so we tried to be all inclusive and we carried lots of different items, and our assortments were much larger than the drugstores of today.

We used to carry 25,000 items, and most of them only carry ten to 12 today.

Like Holmes's and Woolworth, New Orleanians not only adopted the store as their own, they rechristened it with their own distinctive nickname a lot of people call it Scotts and Bestof, and they shortened it to Katz's, and that went on for many years.

So we thought that we should get up with the times and we changed the corporate name to K, K, and B, so people called it KB My mother's favorite place was Katz in Bestof, and she called it Cats.

Now, the first Cats was on Gentilly, and that's where she shopped.

And of course she had to drive there.

But then as she got older and my children were around, there was a cat on Esplanade and brought and that was her favorite cats.

And I remember her telling either Mark or Julie, I want you to go to cats, and here's a list of things that I want.

So that was her very favorite store, like the clock at Holmes's and Wegmans bags K and B had a distinctive trademark that shoppers fondly associated with the store K and B purple.

My grandmother bought a job, lot of purple paper that somebody had rejected and started wrapping packages with it.

All of a sudden they realized when you saw people on this on Canal Street, you could tell immediately where they were shopping by looking at the color of the paper.

So we graduated from purple paper to purple string and then to purple bags and then the purple everything.

And at one time the Times-Picayune was the largest user of purple ink in America for our ads a variety of items ranging from pencils to playing cards carried the K and B brand name, as did an extensive liquor line.

I remember Casablanca wine that was Casa K assay both in white and red.

They had all the popular colors.

I believe they had A, K and B brand beer, and I know they had again, this brand Bourbon, which is Sidney spelled backwards.

And then we had another private label called Sir Sidney, another Bourbon very popular.

We had chronic brow beer again, KB We had Royal Purple was one of the names.

We ran that royal purple gin, royal purple vodka and that sort of thing.

While K and B might have carried 25,000 items for many shoppers, the main attraction was the sweet stuff nectar, soda, nectar sodas.

They were fabulous.

And in a sense and they did, you know, and they had great desserts and malts that were unbelievable.

Oh, Frozen Crail Cream Cheese was one of every one in the whole family.

It was one of our favorite desserts, and we never made it at home.

So it was always coming from k b from the drugstore when I was going to do it, there was a cane beyond Gentilly.

And I remember our group, Willis Robinson, Mitchell, Bourbon in Palo Alto.

And we'd walk down to the game and we'd read the magazines, you know, after we had our mouth in four 199, I think it was you got the hamburger and the Coke and the French fries.

And there was a great game being on Napoleon in Saint Charles with a wonderful soda fountain and booths where you could get a Coke for a nickel and you could sit in the booth and read the comic books, pretty much unbothered by the management for a long time.

And then there was another great candy on Louisiana and Saint Charles, and it had a great soda fountain where you could sit on a stool and drink the nickel coke.

And I used to hit both of them.

You know, if I had the money now, if I only had my $0.07 car, I'd hit one and get a Coke.

But I'd try for both.

I'd try to get enough change before I left home.

That I could hit both on the way home.

But I absolutely loved that in their heyday, the stores we've remembered were all popular, and while they may be gone, there is still life in the places where they once were.

D.H. Holmes Department Store is now the Chateau Sonesta Hotel, and hanging out under the clock is a bronze version of Ignatius Riley from that quintessentially New Orleans novel, A Confederacy of Dunces.

Just down the block where Mason Lodge once was, is the home of yet another hotel, the swank Ritz-Carlton South.

Rampart Street is today a sea of parking lots.

Efforts are underway to preserve some of the remaining buildings connected to the history of New Orleans jazz Wash. Wegmans is no more formal.

Locations continue to be supermarkets.

The Airline Highway location is the site of a service center a national chain, and Wegmans original location at Saint Claude and Elysian Fields is part of the locally owned RO Beer Supermarkets, Purple signs have been replaced by red, white and blue ones cats and best dogs sold to the Florida based Rite Aid chain of drugstores in 1997 another landmark became part of the city's past if New Orleanians weren't busy sipping nectar sodas or making groceries, then they might have been making their way through the department stores.

Our shopping history is filled with bargains and extravagances, yet the memories are priceless.

Daley's was the best commercial.

Daley's was a discount lady's store on Canal Street.

Today it is who you are and where you work and how you want to pay for a happy, easy credit shopping that I'm dumb, dumb, that I'm dumb dumb.

By the Daley's way.

You know it was fabulous.

Of course, I was too young to know about that because I did see it when Dutch got out of the Army.

When we first came back, there was a warehouse sale.

So we went shopping and we bought the living room sofa and a chair and a vacuum cleaner.

My mother said a vacuum cleaner you don't even have any carpets.

I mean, to buy a vacuum cleaner.

She laughed and said that to young people, you just don't know where to spend your money.

De Tom's Restaurant Oh, they had they had wonderful, ah, fried trout and baked potato and the most delicious bacon pie you've ever tasted.

The funny thing about the restaurant is that has a scale out front.

Yeah, it was room and it was right in the candy department, but.

But only in New Orleans.

Could you have a scale inside of a restaurant?

People go, look how much you hate where the Orleans Chopped is made possible by the WYES Produce a circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the sport of Channel 12 local productions Dreams.

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