Saks I

I started this post back in October ’07, I just revisited it. I feel the need to post it, now, not that now is a better time than it might have been nearly a year ago. It cries for editing, for changes, but it is a Remembery. Editing be damned, read it for what it is, friends–a blog entry–A Remembery by all the rules I put on such:

Eighteen years ago I went to Minneapolis to help open a brand new Saks Fifth Avenue. It was the anchor for Gaviidae Common Mall sitting at the base of the fantastic Cesar Pelli designed Wells Fargo Center (formerly Norwest Tower). This particular Saks was a showcase, the first full-line out-of-town store the company had built in several years. (Any Saks that isn’t the 5th Avenue store is known as an OTS.)

I had come to the company right on the tail-end of an era in visual merchandising where folks knowledgible and skilled in the techniques of display were disappearing. Though I can’t necessarily point the finger directly to it, this was the era of full-blown AIDS, and the visual merchandising field was decimated by it. (All arts felt the dire effect of it.) Can the epidemic be blamed for the change that retail has gone through in the last nearly 20 years? Visual merchandising is also an expensive proposition, at least in the way it was practiced at that time.

When I went to Minneapolis for the store opening, we unpacked some 80 mannequins, 40 for the various departments of the store interior, and another 40 or so–a duplicate contingent–for use in the windows (the Minneapolis store had nine street level windows, four on the Nicollet side, five on the Seventh Street side). At the time, depending on the manufacturer, mannequins ranged from $800 to $1200 each.

Sometime shortly after the opening of the Minneapolis store, attitudes toward visual merchandising shifted toward this more “merchandisey” slant. At some point in the last 20 years, visual merchandising moved from a highly stylized art form to a rote and ruley exercise: Placing merchandise on the sales floor, then changing clothes on headless forms to match the rack immediately to its side. Extracting nearly all creativity, for the customer and visual merchandiser alike. As new stores opened , custom mannequins were developed for Saks and there was a marked departure from “realistic” mannequins to a stylized form. Where a hair style was molded into the sculpture of the head, and where on occasion you’d find molded shoes instead of feet. Now, I see reasons for these changes.

AIDS had taken its toll on the “old boys” who knew what they were doing with wigs and styling. Then, in the case of the shoes, mannequins tended to ruin them, the feet unable to accomodate the miriad heel-heights. Flats and low-heeled shoes were almost always ruined by the need to prop the heel of the shoe up to meet the heel of the mannequin. Pumps fared a bit better since they usually didn’t need to be bent, still the shape of the mannequins foot might stretch the body of the shoe in some unnatural way. At the end of any given season, we’d often have a box of ruined shoes totalling several thousand dollars at retail.

What it boiled down to was this, fewer and fewer retailers were willing to “take” the loss, and less and less knowledge and skill was needed to “manage” the visual aspect of visual merchandising. As time passed, and the skills were no longer required, it soon came to pass that no one, or at the most very few, had the knowledge to share with those who came to the biz with a “burning desire” to “be creative.” (Newcomers would say, “It looks like y’all have so much fun!”) They’d soon became disenchanted–uninterested in carrying a ten-foot ladder around the aisles of the selling floor to hang sale signs from the ceiling. They’d quit and leave with no idea of the style and wit that once was central to visual merchandising.

If I sound bitter, I’m not really. Just sadly noting the passing of something that once lived in me. The Minneapolis Saks, as well as the entire Mall, underperformed. As my visual merchandising mentor and good friend, Dennis Richards (God rest his soul), used to say. “The Ladies who lunch in Detroit, lunch in Bill Blass, the Ladies who lunch in Minneapolis, lunch in Carole Little.” If I may be so bold to say, it seems Minneapolitans had little use for the really good stuff.

Now the beautiful space that was a showplace of a Saks Fifth Avenue, is an Off Fifth outlet that’s doing quite well. It offers “final” markdown merchandise from other Saks’ OTS, as well as overruns from manufacturers of high end designer goods. I imagine the most valuable artwork has been moved out of the store, but honestly there’s still some good stuff hanging on the walls of this now discount house. The fine finishes and surfaces are still there. Fine wall coverings. Groovy furniture. It all seems wrong and at odds in this land of discounted value.

Suddenly I’m feeling sad. It almost feels like grief.

 

Gordon Lish

Gordon Lish.

Where would I be now, had I “worked” with Gordon Lish? He was an absolute amazement for me. I think I’ve recounted briefly “literally sitting at his feet,” at a fiction–oh, shit, what would we call it? retreat? in Indiana. Three days. We met at a woman’s house. Sat in her living room floor around him. He said he could talk for hours, and we were free to get up and go to the bathroom, or if we had to indulge in the nasty habit, smoke, but he made it clear we would miss something if we did. I never got up to smoke, but I think I did get up once to go to the bathroom. Who knows what I missed?

I never worked for Lish, except for working hard on the “stuff” he proposed. Somewhere in this house, I have a blue canvas notebook with my notes of my time there. I sat with Lish two times. The time I just partially described, the second in a classroom at the University in Indiana. I think I mentioned before, across the aisle from me, Gary Lutz, and on the other aisle and one seat forward, Barton Allen. I think Michael Kimball was in my first sitting. I think he may have been 17 or so then.

Jesus, jesus, jesus! Just to sit there! Just to hear Lish talk. Honestly, his words came into my head, into my heart. My experience there colored every writerly notion I had inside me. And his admonishment: Do you have the sand to dare stand the test of time? You’re up against Shakespeare! You’re up against the Bible!

In little moments I try.

I did have a conversation on the phone with Gordon, when I was in NYC my first time with Saks. I was terrified to try to call him. I sat while they passed it through. He talked for several minutes, said things like, “if you need directions, ask anyone, we all love to help folks find their way around.” He was right. Toward the end of our conversation, he said, “What must you do? You must go to (I may not get this exactly right, it has been many years) Portabello Road, a little Italian restaurant on Thomas in the Village. You must order “Sole Bocca Des,” it isn’t on the menu. Tell them Gordon sent you.” I did. I still remember the taste and feel of it in my mouth. Honestly, the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

The thing I most remember? In a short, short note rejecting once again something I’d sent him, he said, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t have your speech.”

I think that may have been the day I started talking.

 

Remembery from Clusterflock

On the occasion of my 50th birthday a couple years ago, Danny and I went to New York, got ourselves all dressed up and met friends at the Odeon for dinner. After cocktails then wine with dinner and after dinner drinks and the subway ride back uptown in the wee hours of the morning, I stumbled a little on the stairs as we were coming up out of the subway station. Danny took my hand. We emerged to streets dampened by a sudden brief shower. Still holding hands we began to trot toward our hotel two or three blocks away. In my memory we looked for all the world like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, hands clasped, outer arms up and out for balance. We hardly touched the ground, toes gracefully pointed at every step.

 

From the Comments

Brother T writes:

“Come here. You’ve got to see this!”

My mother called me out of the house and pointed to the boiling, green sky. The radio chirped about tornadoes to the west. As with you my recollection predates Super-Mega-HD-Mine’s-Bigger-Than-Yours radar and the jockeying for position to translate tragedy to Nielson up-ticks. When we had a storm we turned the television to channel 1. If the screen lit up with snow then the legend was that the tornado was already on top of you.

“Come here. You’ve got to see this!”

We took my father’s truck out of the river valley and up to the high ground south of town where we could see forever. There’s a particular truth in this cliché . What I saw in the distance I will most certainly see forever. A massive, indifferent wedge inching its way across the horizon – silent and black as coal.

As we drove to church the following morning we crossed the tornado’s path and saw chaos where homes had been for generations. Such random and violent devastation.

“Dad?” I asked. “Why would God do this?”
“I don’t know boy.” he answered. “Just sit back.”

We continued on to church where my father delivered his sermon to a numbed congregation and did his best to address my questions as I was not the only one asking that morning.

The truth of the matter was that he really, really didn’t know.

“Come here. You’ve got to see this!”

Indeed.

 

New Year’s Eve 1983

Living in married student housing at Arkansas State University. Living in a mobile home, 10 x 40 ft. I don’t remember all the circumstances, how I came to be the only one up at midnight. Joni was asleep in bed. I had the Sony on. There was a show with 1984 as the theme. Thank you Mr. Orwell. You brought us the future once. I was living when it came to be.

Three things I remember. A choir of saxophonists walking, in white robes with hoods, down a street in a European town, Venice, I think. They walked up the street playing a single low note. A drone. They walked and played the note for what seemed like a long time. It might have been three minutes. Then a commercial I don’t remember.

John Cage played a piece of music. His instrument? A guitar pick and a seed pod with a long tail that splits when it dries. I’ve since seen this pod fashioned into “roadrunners.” Bamboo skewers for legs glued onto smallish roundish stones. Feathers were painted on, and eyes. I’m sure such as they can still be purchased at Hillbilly Junction. Mr. Cage was slowly plucking the split tail tips, making a plunky music. I scarce knew what to make of it.

The last thing I remember that evening?

 

Laurie Anderson, the first time I’d ever had the opportunity to know of her. Was this the evening she played the violin with the LED in her mouth? I don’t remember. I was mesmerized. I was astonished. She has been a staple in the repertoire of the JenseNeece household all these years hence.

The passing of the old year always brings nostalgia for me. The coming of the new? Great desire for more strength to do what needs to be done and more grace in moments of trial.

 

Winter Wonderland

Shirley came of age in Pittsburgh. Now she lives in Galveston.

I came of age in Dallas. Now I live in northern Illinois.

Just this week I offered her a bald recital of scraping-and-shoveling. This is what I received in return.

 

A Snow from Yesteryear

Morristown Trailer Park, New Muilford, IL.

GrandDad Neece and I. At least according to Mom. I think those are my brother’s eyes and nose. I do have a memory of being on this hill on the sled with GrandDad, perhaps this day, perhaps another. The ride wasn’t particularly smooth. In memory, the day was cold, but above freezing. The snow was melty, the runners of the sled digging a bit into the gravel beneath.

 

‘Twas the Night Before…

My sister was born. It was February 1, 1964.  My brother and I stayed with Grandmother and GrandDad Neece in their mobile-home, in Morristown, a trailer park on the far south-end of Rockford, in New Muilford. They made a bed for us on the fold-down couch in the living room. Along about 9:00 that evening, my brother and I were “in bed,” Grandmother was already asleep, my brother asleep, too. GrandDad was still sitting up, watching The Outer Limits. I was listening, hearing a story of a bee-queen in human form. I was nine. I’d had “unpleasant” experiences after “scary” shows. Bad dreams and what-not. I lay awake listening. At the end, I raised my head in the blue light to see a woman with her nose in a flower. The image morphed into a bee’s face drinking nectar from the flower.  You know? That show? Not so scary. My survival of the image that evening gave me strength to look at scarier things later. Some scary things that, at that time, you wouldn’t think you’d ever find yourself looking at on television, or in magazines, some years later, and think that that isn’t so scary, either.

 

“It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got . . . “

I’d been tacking up malarkey on clusterflock for six months maybe when Deron Bauman posted an image of Atheist Currency that triggered a remembery from days when I still lived in Dallas (I think it may have been the summer after high school graduation). My friend Steve and I stopped by a pizza place on Davis (or maybe Jefferson) Avenue in our Oak Cliff section of town. When the time came to pony up, we offered a twenty-dollar bill — which the restaurant owner examined carefully before informing us that he was calling the police and would we please wait till they arrived.

“It’s not that I think you’re crooks,” he explained. “It’s just that it ain’t got the IN GOD WE TRUST.”

Well, we were young and stupid enough to stick around till the cops showed up, and believe you me, we heard that pizza joint proprietor intone, “It ain’t got the IN GOD WE TRUST” enough times to drill that phrase into our brains for ever and always. Finally a pair of cops showed up and put to rest the pizzeria owner’s fears that we were passing him funny money. Our twenty was just a pre-1957 bill, they assured him.

But to this day, at odd times, I hear that man repeating, “It ain’t got the IN GOD WE TRUST.”

 

Earliest Remembery: Rick

This is a photo of my first birthday. If you can believe it, I remember standing over the cake, one candle burning. Mom with a “top-view” view finder on some kind of Kodak wide format camera. (The Kodak part I learned later, naturally.) I vaguely remember Daddy saying, “Blow.”