Saturday, June 10, 2017
OFF PAGE ONE
J.C. PENNEY: Customers often traveled to town on horses in the early days
Page 10A
East Oregonian
Continued from 1A
The sound of laughter
between clerk and customer
wafted upstairs as the
cashier rang up a shirt at a
fraction of its original price.
The store, the 26th
branch opened by the
company, will soon shut
its doors, along with 137
other branches around the
country.
In Mizerka-Peters’ office,
a portrait of founder James
Cash Penney leans against
the wall. The manager
recently took the picture
down to box up and mail
to company headquarters.
Wearing a bowtie and a
snowy white mustache,
Penney looks contemplative
in the black-and-white
photo. Penney launched the
mega-chain with two part-
ners whom he eventually
bought out.
The Pendleton store is
the oldest in its original
location.
“We were in the first
wave of J.C. Penney stores.
We’ve been here for 106
years,” said Mizerka-Peters.
“We haven’t moved.”
A 1911 advertisement in
the East Oregonian gives
a glimpse of the prices at
the Golden Rule Store,
as it was called then. Bib
overalls cost 25 cents and
a wool serge suit, $14.72.
Horsehide gloves cost 98
cents. Besides clothing, the
store also sold dress goods
and notions. Competitors
at the time included The
Peoples Warehouse, The
Greater Alexander Depart-
ment Store, Workingmen’s
Clothing Company, F.E.
Livengood & Company, the
Wohlenberg
Department
Store, Bond Brothers, The
Hub and H.H. Wessel.
In the early days of J.C.
Penney’s, customers often
traveled to town on horses,
which were tethered to rings
just outside the store.
Inside, things were
different than these days
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
An advertisement from 1911 that ran in the East
Oregonian touts the standards of the Golden Rule
Store, what J.C. Penney was called when I began over
a hundred years ago.
of high-speed internet. In
the mid-1900s, sales trans-
actions traveled from the
floor to the mezzanine via a
canister pulled by wire and
pulley.
“They put the transaction
slip and cash into a metal
tube and it shot up to the
office,”
Mizerka-Peters
said. “The cashier would
make change and send it
back down.”
Mizerka-Peters
has
worked for the J.C. Penney
Company for 25 years, the
last two in Pendleton. When
she first interviewed with the
company, she had planned
to finish college and launch
a career as a geologist.
Then she married a Marine
and moved to California.
Needing temporary work
before returning to school,
she applied for a job at her
local J.C. Penney store. She
discovered that “retail is in
my blood.”
“I loved it,” Mizerka-Pe-
ters said.
Her career took her to
Wisconsin and North Bend
before she finally became
general manager at Pend-
leton and La Grande stores.
For the moment, while
focusing on liquidation,
she is burying any feelings
about the closure. Her
customers, however, aren’t
holding back.
“They’re sad about it,”
Mizerka-Peters said.
The saddest are likely
former employees such
as Nora Pointer and Suzie
Fortier. The two Pendleton
retirees worked a combined
60 years at J.C. Penney
starting in the 1970s and
1980s. At the announcement
of the store closing, Pointer
said, “I was absolutely
shocked. Our store has
shown good sales over the
years and survived a lot of
cuts.”
Fortier said she felt like
crying after learning of the
closure of the place she
spent so many hours.
“I just loved the people
– I miss the customers so
much,” she said. “Everyone
shopped there and it seemed
like everyone worked at
Penney’s at some point.”
The basic layout of
the J.C. Penney store on
Pendleton’s Main Street
hasn’t changed in 106 years,
though some departments
have come and gone. The
basement once housed
fabric, patterns and notions.
In the rear of the main
floor, employees manning a
catalogue desk once helped
people order items from
the massive J.C. Penney
catalogue, which contained
wedding dresses, sewing
machines, appliances and
furniture and myriad other
merchandise.
“The store was geared
toward the working person,”
Pointer said. “There was
a lot of farm and ranch
clothing — jeans and heavy
shirts.”
Fortier worked first in
lingerie, then men’s and
home décor departments.
She rang up sales on a cash
register a few generations
removed from today’s
computerized version. She
ran credit sales by putting
a triplicate sales slip into a
flatbed credit card imprinter
and running the slider back
and forth. She wrapped
purchases in brown paper
secured by tape.
Pointer worked upstairs
in the office where she
first ran a 10-key adding
machine. She hand-typed
invoices, paid bills, did
payroll. Her children often
came to the store after
school and did their home-
work in the breakroom.
“Penney’s was their
second home,” Pointer said.
J.C. Penney touched three
generations of Cori Apple-
gate’s family. Applegate,
who teaches eighth-grade
language arts in Hermiston,
remembers spending time
with her grandmother,
Juanita Applegate, as she
worked in the yardage
department. In addition,
Applegate’s mother sewed
drapes for the store and her
father worked part-time as a
clerk for a short time.
At the store, Applegate
remembers having lunch
with her grandma in the
employee break room and
being free to explore the
store, including a warehouse
area near the fabric depart-
ment.
When Applegate’s grand-
mother died in 2003, Apple-
gate inherited a necklace
her grandma had received
at 15 years. Hanging from
a chain is a ruler and three
diamond chips, one for each
five years served.
“I wear it with pride,”
Applegate said.
Applegate also has the
ring with five diamonds that
her grandmother received
after 25 years.
One wonders what Mr.
Penney might be thinking
right now as the company
he founded shrinks down
further from its peak of
2,053 in the mid-’70s to
half that number today.
According to Dean Hales,
curator of the J.C. Penney
Museum in Penney’s home-
town of Hamilton, Missouri,
Penney wasn’t the type of
guy to get hung up on his
breadth of holdings.
“If you ran into him on
the street, you wouldn’t
have known he had a dime,”
Hales said.
Hales said he knew
Penney since Hale was a boy.
He bought Penney’s 1947
Cadillac and attended the
department store tycoon’s
funeral after Penney’s death
in 1971. Hale now oversees
the museum that contains a
wax tuxedo-clad sculpture
of Penney, his office furni-
ture and his Masonic sword,
among other memorabilia.
The Pendleton store will
become a memory on July
31 when the doors close
for good. Mizerka-Peters
will especially miss the
employees.
“They are hard workers
and so positive,” she said.
“We have built some posi-
tive relationships at this
store. We are family.”
———
Contact Kathy Aney at
kaney@eastoregonian.com
or call 541-966-0810.
OPENINGS FOR OPERATORS OF
NEW RETAIL LIQUOR LOCATIONS
OLCC is recruiting applicants for new retail liquor locations. The open recruitment
process is a market-driven effort to improve customer convenience by expanding
retail liquor locations with a measured, but consistent amount of growth.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission is accepting applications and aiming to add new
retail liquor locations in the following counties:
Baker County
Crook County
Deschutes County
Gilliam County
Grant County
Hood River County
Jefferson County
Morrow County
Sherman County
Umatilla County
Union County
Wallowa County
Wasco County
Wheeler County
Applicants are evaluated on background, knowledge and work experience in:
• Retail business management
• Inventory/cash management
• Retail sales and operation
• Customer service/public relations in a retail environment
• Financial ability to open and operate a retail liquor location
A detailed business plan will be required as part of the application process.
For additional information on open recruitment for new retail liquor locations and application information, visit:
http://www.oregon.gov/OLCC/LIQUORSTORES/Pages/liquorsalesoutlets_openrecruitment.aspx
Questions can be directed to OLCC.RetailServices@oregon.gov or call 503-872-5020 (toll-free 1-800-426-
2004, Dept # 62). Provide your name, email address and phone number. Applications can also be picked up
at 9079 SE McLoughlin Blvd., Portland, OR 97222.
An application with a business plan must be received at OLCC’s main office in Portland at the above
address, by 5:00 PM, Monday, July 31st, 2017. Applications received after this deadline will not be accepted.
Additional open recruitments for these areas and others in the state may occur in the future.
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PUBLISHES:
June 28, 2017
DEADLINES:
June 08, 2017
Father’s Day Weekend June 16-18 2017
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• Main Street Show & Shine
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