talgic years later. Five and

Ten Cent stores rate high on
my list and no Wal-Mart or
Dollar Store will ever replace
the romance of wooden-floored
emporiums of cheap junk.

Woolworth’s and
Kresge’s, Ben Franklin’s and
McCrory’s and J .J .Newberry’s —
what kind of person am I that I
enshrine in my heart such capi-
talist monuments? I’m an
American who lives in the land
of the free to shop, in a con-
sumer society that is addicted to
recreational shopping.

My acquisitive side
developed under the tutelage of
a mother who was called a
housewife, but who was actually
a shopper. So many of the stay-
at-home-and-take-care-of-the-
kids women who reached matu-

lt’s funny what we find nos-

 

guns and holsters, the toy cow-
boys, the tiny trucks and red
wagons. If I was lucky, I might
get a book of paper dolls to take
home. If I was very lucky, one
of the dolls would be a boy;
they were more fun to dress
than the girls.

Eventually I grew into
my teens and could meander
downtown on my own. It was
on one such early excursion to a
Five and Ten that I lost my first
transistor radio, my constant
companion, my personal rock
and roll concert hall. The trauma
of that day is still with me.
“Transistors” were hot new
items then and I’d lefi mine in a
photo booth, one of those
machines where you got three
shots for a quarter. One of the
sales clerks put it carefully
behind her counter. This was no

 
 

ntimental Shopper

first t-shirts (back when they
were not fashion statements but
underwear), my first Zippo
lighter — all came from the Five
and Ten. Suzy and I got our
engraved I.D. bracelets, sort of
like lesbian engagement rings,
there. Even a queer kid could
find what she needed at the Five
and Ten. ,
Later, when these relics
were no longer to be found in
the cities, I came across one in

tiny Lee, Massachusetts. It was 2 ..

small, but dense with goods, and
an essential part of every visit to
my in-laws’ vacation place. All
the women in the family would
crowd the aisles, exclaiming
over doodads and gewgaws.
Laughing, we’d buy ultimately
useless stuff — three generations
of us, my girlfriend, her mom
and her grandmother — for the
memories invoked.

Maybe gay kids born in
the twenty-first century will get
sentimental over Wal-Marts and
malls in the same way. Do
young femmes ever get busted
for ripping off lipsticks from
Wal-Mart? Are there young
butch mall rats roaming J.C.
Penney’s in packs? I ’ll watch
for young queer couples sitting
far back in the food courts, shar-

Even a queer kid could find what
she needed at the Five and Ten.

rity in the depression years had
no resistance to a shopping way
of life. Nothing could have
seemed better on a hot summer
day than sitting on a stool (with
a back) in the air-conditioned
cool, chatting with the waitress-
es and lunching on tuna on
white toast (with a toothpick
flag speared into pickle chips)
and a wickedly expensive milk-
shake. Nothing except sitting on
that same stool in winter com-
forted by the smell of wet wool
mingled with a cup of hot
chocolate (with decadent marsh-
mallows). All for well under a
dollar. Those women must have
felt, afier the lean years, like
they’d gone to heaven before
their time.
I was an apprentice

Five and Ten shopper, roaming
the aisles wearing (horrors) a
sun dress or (horrors) a snow-
suit. Occasionally I got to stay
in the toy aisle while my mother
explored the cosmetics and per-
fumes. A well-behaved child, I
didn’t touch, only longed for the

small town, but the anonymous
clerk looked as pleased as I felt
by the reunion.

That photo machine
was to figure more prominently
in my life a couple of years later
when I had another first: a girl-
friend. I still have one of the
pictures Suzy and I took, self-
consciously squeezed as close as
we dared inside the booth.
When we weren’t documenting
our defiant love I hung out in
the hardware aisle while Suzy,
rather than my mother, lingered
over the makeup and jewelry.
How I yearned for a set of
screwdrivers, a wood-handled
hammer of my own.

You could say I grew
up in Five and Tens. My pet tur-
tle Klem Kadiddlehopper, color-
ing books, a child-sized trap
drum set, my collection of 45s
(those ancient disks played one
song on each side; I still want to
flip my CDs for the rest of the
music), pads of paper, ballpoint
pens and clunky mechanical
pencils galore, my first tie, my

ing an Orange Julius. Making
memories. V

Copyright Lee Lynch 2002

Lee Lynch is the author of
eleven books including The
Swashbuckler and the Morton
River Valley Trilogy. She lives
on the Oregon Coast, and comes
from a New England family.

 

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