Local head-end work

[NW Mailing List]

In my Grandparents house the?Sears catalogue?was a multifunctional household accessary.? It?appeared around the first of the year and for several months?would reside?next to Grandaddy's chair.? In idle moments in the evening it was the?literary object of choice.??TV had 3 channels that went off the air?each night and?the newpaper came twice a week.? You already knew who had died,?who was in the hospital or had gone before the judge. Both he and Grandma would read it like a magazine and in a month or two it would work it's way to back the bathroom as reading material.,?

At birthdays and Christmas it was actually used to order presents that couldn't be bought in downtown Roxboro.? The closest Sears store was in Durham, not a convient hour trip?for people who grew up with horses and the Model T.? There was a lot of mail order business at the Post Office and Depot.? Getting something from Sears was special, just like getting something something?from over seas.? "Made in Japan" was an imported and exotic item.

Old catalogues were never thrown away, but kept for years.? It wasn't old until it was two years old and replaced by two new annual ones. These would reside on the lowest shelf in the sideboard.? Along towards Easter when my cousins would hit town, the Sears catalogue converted to a boster seat for the small fry.? If you could sit still and not be trouble, you might sit at the table with the grownups.??One or two catalogues would?boost your face above plate level making it a little easier to be taken seriously.? I remember seeing the old catalogues serving as door stops, flower presses, weights for holding things down, and a thousand other uses.? When a catalogue was considered old and out of date, it would take?a trip to Uncle Merle's farm, to spend the rest of the days in the "little house out back".

This was in the late 1950s and well into the late 1960s that the Sears Catalogue was an important part of the Stewart household.? I wonder how much it contributed indirectly to N&Ws business in small rural towns as?an instigator of mail order business??

Chuck Stewart
Bahama, NC


-----Original Message-----
From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Fri, 8 Aug 2008 8:10 pm
Subject: Re: Local head-end work


I don't know what took place prior to the two messages listed below, but I have a few comments that may be on subject.?
?
I had a job with the N&W handling mail at the Bluefield passenger station during my Christmas breaks from college in 1954 and 1955. I remember lugging post office bags of mail and packages off the platform trucks and piling them up in storage mail cars. In order to get the heaviest bags of Christmas packages high up on the pile toward the end of the car, we would sometimes have to climb up the mound of bags, feeling packages giving way underneath our feet, unfortunately for the recipients.?
?
We would get a chance to catch our breath for a day or two around Christmas Day after most Christmas mail was disposed of, only to be confronted with an even greater challenge as the Sears, Roebuck (also, maybe, Montgomery Ward) catalogs came in an unbelievable flood. The bags of these catalogs were so heavy that I could hardly lift just one. I dragged many of them across the floor, obviously putting a lot of wear on the Post Office's bags.?
?
These big Sears catalogs were popular at least into the 1960's because I remember going to the store in my early days in Roanoke to get one to keep at home for reference. According to a Sears Website, Sears stopped publishing the general catalogs in 1993. I seem to recall that by then, the size of the catalog was much smaller than the ones of the 1950's and 1960's.?
?
On a related matter, on one occasion that I remember our N&W mail handling gang was lounging in the mail room between trains when several of the men perked up and opened the door to witness what they had heard. I joined them as we looked at a westbound train coming up the grade with a very distinctive engine exhaust. "That's a 1200," one of them said. Class A locomotives were rare enough around Bluefield in those days to attract attention from these railroad men whenever one showed up. This one was apparently on a time freight from Roanoke. Maybe it's assignment was being transferred from Roanoke to Portsmouth.?
?
Gordon Hamilton?
?
----- Original Message ----- From: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>?
To: "huddleston.eugene" <huddleston.eugene at yahoo.com>?
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 3:45 AM?
Subject: Local head-end work?
?

> Sears and Wards catalogues?

> Monday, August 4, 2008 7:23 PM?

> From: "huddleston.eugene" <huddleston.eugene at yahoo.com>?

> To: f_scheer at yahoo.com?

>?

> As for date of my experience, it was in 1947. I am almost positive that > both catalogues were distributed only once a year. They were heavy and > they were very thick. Cost of production would have been high. I just > talked to 84 yr old bro in law in Croswell and he recalls them?

> well in years both before and after WW2. I expect shipments went down > greatly in number around 1956, because that is when I learned that a > large new Sears opened in suburban Huntington WV and in fort Wayne IN > about same year. As for other observations about ry express, I recall > being at ironton, Ohio depot shortly before N&W e.b Cavalier arrived. On > an open baggage cart were shipments of drugs from a local small drug > wholesale company. The shipments were small and not in bulk. (This was > about 1954) Most interesting was where they were being shipped. It looked > like there was a small box going to each station on N&W's Pocahontas Div. > mainline.?

>?

>?

> August 5, 2008?

>?

> Thanks for the information, Gene. Personal observations such as these are > always helpful regarding head-end traffic. Not many people took an > interest in this during the era you've mentioned.?

>?

> Best wishes,?

>?

> Frank?

>?

>?

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