It wasn’t a universal rule, but
most business’ wanted teens to be at least 16 before they would hire them. I
had some limitations. Any job I got had to be near a bus stop or close enough
that I could walk or bike. So, after turning sixteen and with only a couple
months of school left, I set out to find a job. I had no idea what I could do.
The primary goal was just getting money.
The first week I looked in the
paper Kinney Shoes advertized for a part-time salesman. I had my doubts, but
kept it on the back burner. After about a week of finding nothing of interest
to me, I noticed the Kinney’s ad was still running.
Monday after school I walked down
the hill from Central to 16th and Dodge to check out the store. J.C.
Penny’s was on one side of the street, a hole in the wall greasy spoon was directly
across the street and Kinney’s next-door to the eatery. I sat on the bus bench
in front of Penny’s and watched. The store was busy. I could see at least four,
maybe five salesmen hustling around. I knew the inside look of the store.
That’s where we bought shoes. The more I looked the more threatening it became.
After an hour, I went home. However, I came back the next day and the next day
and waited an hour both days.
Finally summing up the courage I
walked into the store and asked to see the manager. I was startled that I did
that as I was scared. I don’t what why I was scared, but I was.
I was taken through a back maze of
shelves and shoes, up a steep narrow staircase to a long narrow room (if you could call it that) the width of
the tore and with a ceiling so low everyone entering was bent over. The room
had one-way windows that over looked the sales floor. Mr. Lause looked out one
of those windows.
I sat next to his desk and he
asked what he could do for me. I told him I was here to apply for the part-time
sales position. He looked seriously at me and laughed. It wasn’t a mean laugh,
more of a surprised laugh. “I doubt you would make much of a salesman.” My
heart fell to the floor. He went on, “But I do need a stock boy. If you comeback
Monday at 3:30 I’ll give you a try.”
I had no idea what a stock boy
was, but it was a possible job so I was there on Monday. When I checked in he
had two other boys and we were going to compete for one job. We were to “run”
stock and flatten empty show boxes. How hard could that be?
He spread us into three separate areas
so we would have no contact with one another. Running stock meant moving the
shoe boxes close together and leaving no empty holes. He wanted the front to
look like the store had plenty of shoes no matter what the back looked like.
Flattening boxes destroyed the hands. Every shoebox had a string running around
the top edge of both the box and the lid. Ripping each corner dug into my
hands.
I was determined to beat the other
guys and do a great job. I wanted the work. When the day was done, I learned
the other boys had left sometime ago and I was to come back Thursday after
school. I would be working Monday, Thursday and part of Saturdays. I was
walking on air. My first job, that is if you don’t count the one day my
neighbor tried to get me to sell Watkins door-to-door or the occasional weekend
unpaid job I had helping my brother-in-law make donuts in what I thought was
the middle of the night. I hated donuts after that.
My connection with Kinney’s was to
last four years.
The interior view looks identical to the
store where I worked. The exterior view had just been changed before I applied.
It had a full glass front allowing one to see the entire store from the
outside. The sign is correct, however the "open to 9" portion was an
addition to the stand alone stores they were just beginning to build at I left
for Canada. Kinney's operated from 1894-1998. Foot Locker began in 1974 as a
division of Kinney's. On September 16, 1998 the Venator Group, Woolworth's
successor, announced that Kinney's 467 shoe stores and 103 Footquarters stores
would close. The Foot Locker division, started in 1974, continues to this day,
with Venator changing its name in 2001 to Foot Locker. If you even owned a pair of Buster Brown shoes they were made my Kinney's.
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