Life's Lost Little Luxuries # 10: Department Store Deliveries

 
"...and send it please."

That would be my mother at the counter of Higbee's or Halle Bros. in downtown Cleveland. The time would be late 1940s into the '50s, before shopping centers and malls, when "shopping" meant going downtown with a list to the big department stores.

If the list were long and/or the packages big you wouldn't want to haul them around all day, especially if you were with an 8-year-old, more hindrance than help. It was much easier to "send it please" and have the boxes show up a day or two later at your doorstep. PS If you were my mother, you were almost always home—in the suburbs, no car, with a house and family to take care of.

I can clearly see those delivery vans in my mind's eye—green like their boxes for Halle's, brown with discreet gold lettering for Higbee's. I imagine May Company and Taylor's had trucks too, but the good stuff came from Halle's or Higbee's.

Outside Halle Bros. 1940

I still get pretty excited when UPS or Fedx pulls onto the street, a little less so for the postal van. But a department store delivery was a "welcome home" to what you had carefully chosen just a few days before.

I don't remember when the parade stopped. We moved to an apartment. My mother went back to work—downtown. There were now shopping centers, soon to be malls. One-stop shopping and load it in your car. I started shopping for myself and wanted it THEN.

It is ironic that Sears, which began as a mail-order company, recently closed locations and lowered expectations because it couldn't compete with home delivery like Amazon. What no one seems to mention is we have even become disinclined to venture away from our keyboards and actually visit the store.

The thrill is gone, along with boxes, tissue, paper tape, tea rooms and delivery vans.