| DECEMBER 2007 --
(Editor’s Note: The following article was part of a Lecturer’s program for Farmington Valley Pomona. We are sure it will bring back many memories of Christmas’ past regardless of where you live or grew up.)
Occasionally, it may have been more often, but usually it was a once a year event.
On a special Friday evening, Mom would announce that tomorrow seemed like a good day to go to Hartford. It was early December. The thought of going to Hartford at Christmastime was almost as exciting as the Holiday itself. No need to call more than once to get us out of bed that morning. We were up and ready in a flash. Probably had very little sleep during the night. After breakfast, Mom loaded us into the old Chevy and over Avon Mountain we went for our day in the big city.
It seemed to take forever to get there, but all of a sudden she was parking the car on Church Street and we were nearly running toward Main Street. Our eyes were fixed on the G. Fox marquee. What a splendid display that was! We wanted to rush into Foxes, but there were other things to do first.
We rounded the corner by Christ Church Cathedral and headed down that side of the street. If we had stopped in Wise Smith’s we may have seen Maggie’s Aunt Beaty in the millinery department, but we were headed for Newberry’s. Down in the basement was a little booth where we dropped a quarter in and posed for four pictures to commemorate the day. Upstairs we dropped another quarter or two to purchase a morsel or two at the candy counter to sustain us until lunchtime.
Crossing over to the Isle of Safety, we went to Grants. It was a fun place to look around, but the stop was usually for curtains for one room or another at home. Back on Main Street, we were rapidly passing as many of the small stores as possible. As I clomped along in my good old brown StrideRites, I slowed a bit to check out the stylish shoes that I would wear when I got older. A stop in Sage Allen for a dress or something for Mom and then down to their basement for a sandwich.
Somehow, we managed to bypass Brown Thomson’s and we were entering the revolving doors at Foxes. What a thrill! Other stores were o.k., but this was the best! There was always a special smell as we flew past the perfumes and ladies pocketbooks, etc. and jumped on the escalators. All the way to the eleventh floor we went with Mom right behind us. As we arrived in toyland, everything looked like Christmas. Mom sat on a bench and we were admonished to look at anything we wanted to, but our hands had to be in our pockets. We were told to touch nothing. We had a whole 30 to 45 minutes to enjoy everything in sight. That was our time. Santa Claus must not have arrived from the North Pole yet, because we never saw him.
When the time came to leave our haven, we headed back down. On the way, we had time to check out the beautiful holiday decorations. We were moving much more slowly now and had to put up with a few stops Mom had to make for shopping. I can still see the helpful salesladies as they carefully folded each item, put in a gift box and then into the familiar blue or holiday shopping bag. After it was packaged, Mom would take her little notched charga-plate out of its brown case and hand it over to the clerk. This was the predecessor to our charge cards. Each major store would notch the one plate to be used whenever the holder did not wish to carry cash. I’m sure my Mother never let the charge go longer than a month as is the unhealthy American way of today.
We stopped on nearly every floor to check out sports items, clothes (not much time on these), to stop in the music department to bring a record into one of the small listening booths to see it if was really what we liked. A stop on the 6th floor was a must to see how the special display rooms were furnished. On several floors there were salesmen by the escalators demonstrating the newest inventions from vacuum cleaners to mixers and more.
As we approached the first floor, we dragged our feet a bit. We looked at everything we had hurried past on our way up, just to prolong our stay in the wonderful Queen of Stores - G. Fox and Company.
I always wanted Mom to carry me to the car, but she had packages and was more tired than I. The ride home was short, probably because I slept most of the way, but the memories were wonderful and I’m sure my parents gleaned ideas for gifts from the things we talked about for the next few weeks.
Memories of the Hartford we knew are wonderful- the blue delivery trucks with the pictures of Foxes in the outline of the State of Connecticut that frequented our neighborhoods- shopping with my cousin, elevator rides with my Aunt Martha, lunches in Foxes cafeteria and alter with my Aunt Astrid in the Connecticut Room (she is also the one who introduced me to Honiss’ - she knew all the good eating places)- trips on the bus from Unionville with classmates to shop and then cry all the way home because Elvis died in one of the movies we stopped to see in one of the beautiful old theaters.
Route 84 was originally designed to skirt the city, but influential people like Beatrice Auerbach convinced the decision makers that it would take business out of the city. Even with the new parking garages and other enticements, suburban malls were the demise of downtown Hartford.
With Adriaen’s Landing and the new Connecticut Convention Center, I hope Hartford will make the comeback that the developers are dreaming of, but no one will ever know the thrill of Hartford as we knew it.
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