Jack’s Mid-Missouri Memory: Christmas Stores

Jack Miller   Christmas Stores

As I watch the Christmas shoppers rushing around Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and all the other big stores in Sedalia today; I can’t help but think back to those cold crisp December days of my youth, and the stores we shopped in back then. The big stores in Sedalia at that time were Woolworth, TG&Y, Crown Drug, Penny’s, Lockets; well you know the rest of them if you were young then too. Those were stores whose merchandise would fit in one isle of the super stores of today. They had something these larger ones don’t have however, at least not to some of us with a few years behind us. There was a feeling hard to define, but I remember it as Christmassy. It may be because I was young, but I don’t think so; the bustling stores downtown seemed like they were little extensions of Santa’s workshops the way they were decorated, something the larger stores can’t seem to pull off. Even Reeds Grocery, the little store on 4th and Emmitt, where my family did most of their shopping when I was a kid had that feeling. Mr. Reed always had Christmas songs playing when the season came along. He also had the big display case at the front of his store full of Christmas toys and Christmas candy. My favorite Christmas candy was that hard candy that looked like a ribbon; I don’t see that candy in stores anymore. Mr. Reed always had it prominently displayed in that case when the season came around, along with all the other Christmas favorites like candy canes and chocolates. He also displayed a few toys in that case, for us kids to wish for too. I doubt that kids today would be very excited over the type of toys that made my friends and I press our noses up to Mr. Reeds display case. Today most toys have to be battery operated, or something with a screen. For kids I grew up with however, our imaginations supplied all the power we needed. I do admit however that I loved wind up toys, and also my electric train I received one Christmas, but when the spring broke on those toys I was perfectly content to push them around manually. Today we just return it for a new one.

I have written several stories about Christmas, and I have written about downtown Sedalia before, but some of my clearest memories as a small child come when those two subjects are combined. I would guess that is true of many people around my age, who remember the crowded streets and stores of downtown Sedalia during the holiday shopping season. Sometime when the ground is white from a slow falling snow, and I walk into a store, with a Christmas Carol playing; just for a moment I’m back there on Ohio Street, shopping with mom and sis.