Oh, dammit: research spoils EVERYTHING. I was all set to upload this to the Strib Blog under the title “Olivah, dahling,” with the summary “A few years ago, Arnold would have been approved for a no-doc loan,” and the body copy “Suddenly, the backstory of‘Green Acres’ seems more complex than previously thought.” I wish I didn’t have to have a title, or a summary, but that’s another matter. Here’s the image I intended to post:
Except, of course, the character’s name was EB. Not Zeb, but Eb. The idea that Eb may have been Mr. Haney’s son would have added much to the show. Not that it needed it. “Green Acres” was one of the most peculiar, surreal shows that came from CBS’ cornpone period; it doesn’t belong in the same world as the other rural-based shows. Almost every conversation was a masterpiece of circular logic.
You don’t always see a page of pictures of a corporate CEO touring a new store on a Segway, so here you go. It’s the new Penneys store in Manhattan. I don’t keep up on New York culture as much as I used to, so if the locals are horrified, I don’t know, or care. I remember how Target made some sniff with distaste, because a Big Box retailer was intruding on the quaint scale of Manhattan; I’m sure Penneys draws rolled eyes in the right crowds. It’s so . . . Anchorage. Or Idaho. Whichever.
But the new store inhabits a space sanctified by its spiritual predecessors. The building used to be an A&S store, and I recall hearing the locals – meaning, people who’d lived in New York a WHOLE YEAR or so – complaining about the building’ indoor mall. That was so suburban. You wonder if they had a Nathan’s as some sort of sacrificial offering. Look! They don’t have these in Indianapolis! Nathan’s! Okay? Before it was a mall, it was Gimbels, that which does not tell Macy’s, once the largest department store chain in the country. So it’s a venerable mid-market retail location.
(By the way, Titanic fans: yes, that Strauss.)
As I’m sure some of the news articles note, Penneys used to have its corporate HQ in Manhattan, at 1301 6th avenue – in a perfect early 1960s building of great bulk and small charm. It’s the usual fat-base-tall-tower model produced by the zoning laws. (New York has changed national architectural styles twice, both times with zoning laws, both times in a quest for more air and space. The first led to the gorgeous set-backs of the 20s and 30s; the second time led to tall featureless towers standing alone in chilly, modern plazas.) When they left in the late 80s for Plano, Texas, it must have stung – but now it seems odd they were there in the first place. Think of it: Can you imagine a major retail corporation setting up shop in New York today? Why would they?
Back then, it made sense: NYC was the center of the world; your buyers needed to be there, your finance people, and of course you needed to be close to your ad men, so you could have a nine-martini lunch, get boiled as owls, and agree that the new fall campaign (“Fall – it’s at Penneys”) was genius, brother, pure hic! genius.
Upon googling around for some info on the building, I found a brief bio page of the company’s founder, a man with the best name in main-street retail: James Cash Penney. Born in 1875, he not only lived long enough to see the New York HQ erected, he worked there, every day, until his death in 1971. Well, maybe he didn’t come in the last week. It’s quite amazing to think of it – the fellow was old enough to have seen the Woolworth Tower when it was brand new. The Cathedral of Commerce! Some day I shall build one, smaller, with absolutely no ornamentation, and I shall sit in the uppermost floors, wreathed by the clouds, approving pictures of mutton-chopped men in thick brown corduroy suits.
It looks better at the Magic Hour, but they all do.
When I was a kid – yes, I have a macro that automatically types that sentence – I intuited the market position of Penneys from my mother. Before the Mall, downtown had four department stores. Herbst and DeLendrecie’s were the Finer Stores; Penneys was the mid-price decent place, and Sears was just a hair below Penneys, possibly because they made a point of selling tires and screwdrivers as well. In a way Penneys survival seems remarkable, because its longevity seems matched only by the utter lack of any kind of consumer identification. People are content to shop there, but no one ever thinks “I’m a Penneys person!” or claps their hands with delight when they open a Christmas package that contains a Penneys box. It’s the retail equivalent of the Post Office, in a way – monolithic, eternal, dull, unhip despite its endless attempts to demonstrate imagination.
I went to the post office today to mail something, which might be why the analogy came to mind. I’d been meaning to mail the item for a week, but I didn’t know how much postage it would take. Two clerks, each of substantial girth, but different temperments: one was jolly and outgoing, the other irritated and peevish. One gave customers a hi-ho when they came up, a fare-thee-well when they left; the other dealt curt nods and indifference. I drew the latter. But while I was waiting I noticed the signs on the wall; they all forbid certain things. One forbid children sitting on the counter. The other told you to end your cell phone conversation.
Can’t think of any other store that makes such a . . . request. Can you?
Column night, so I’m back to work. On something. Whatever it turns out to be. In the meantime: Lance Lawson returns! Now, at the Stribblog. Later: First Day Covers. See you around.
Pass it along, if you wish
72 Responses to Thursday, Aug. 06
Host with the Most
@bgbear (roger h)
Heh. Reminds me of the “Are You Being Served?” episode where the staff were all competing to do the sales announcements over the PA system. “This is the ladies department: knickers are down today.”
Welcome to the site, Zeb – you’ve made the thread complete!
@Will
oh, I may have been channeling Mollie Sugden. . .
If you’ll excused me some lady wants me to help her look for her pussy.
If you’ll excuse me
As a teenage boy, for me half the fun of Green Acres was its surrealism.
The other half was watching Eva Gabor walk around in her nightie.
Yes, but when Ralph Monroe showed up in her white coveralls, Yowza! it was like “Eva Who?”
1301 6th Ave is one of the (lesser known) Rockefeller Center buildings. When I worked at Lehman Brothers, it was my home base for about a year. Not a bad place for a corporate headquarters, but not a retail store.
Also, I’d think that if there are people who look down their noses at JC Penny, they’ve probably been looking down their noses at The Manhattan Mall for some years now…
There’s a scene in Green Acres, I think in the first or second episode, where Lisa steps out of the shower and is nude for a few frames before wrapping a towel around herself. Of course you couldn’t see anything but a glimpse of her figure. But that’s when I realized that she was a hottie, dahling. I think my puberty started the day I saw that.
One of my favorite things about GA was that every time Oliver and Lisa’s first meeting was mentioned, it was a different story.
Oh, and to this day my dad hates the character of Mr. Kimball. Well, I wouldn’t say he hates him, more of a dislike. Not so much of a dislike as an annoyance. No, come to think of it, he DOES hate Mr. Kimball.
I love the way they introduced Alvy Moore’s Hank Kimball character: “I’m the county agent. Name’s Kimball, Hank Kimball. Well, it’s not really ‘Kimball Hank Kimball’, the Kimball comes at the end. But then that would make me Hank Kimball Kimball … wait a minute…”
CRJ has nailed the Kimball Speech Pattern perfectly. Well, not PERFECTLY.
Uh, where was I? Oh yes, department store chimes! Robert Klein used to translate them while playing his handy-dandy “African thumb piano” and singing the words in the same pitch thusly:
“[PING] .. There’s a woman .. [PING] in the girdles .. [PING] .. She’s trying to steal one .. [PING] get her!”
PERFECT! Well, not PERFECT…
@Lileks
Thank you sir!
The old guy who built the house I live in had a little mini farm going and used a little tractor. I never got it going but I use it for decoration and always refer to it as the Hoyt-Clagwell.
I came across this thread on a tractor discussion board, I think the guy who started in was serious but, the responses are funny and knowing:
cut and paste or click on my name to the left
>>>>http://www.ytmag.com/orphans/messages/80.html<<<<<<<
@ Lou Shoemaker: Minnesota has a Columbia Heights, too–it’s a suburb of Minneapolis and isn’t exactly what you’d call “hipster” (I can say that, I went to high school there and still live nearby). It’s definately diverse and has lots to recommend it…but the nearest Target is in the next suburb up the road. I enjoyed your link immensely (after I got past “nuh-UH–Target’s in Fridley!!”)
“dings” reminds me of “Blue Light Special” at KMart, remember those? “Blue Light Special on panty hose, aisle 5, for the next 20 minutes”. Stampede ensues.
To set the record straight, there is a Manhattan Target on 34th Street
Bob
I still haven’t figured out who was being made fun of in Green Acres. Was it everybody from every direction?
curtsnide: Oh, definitely. Very rarely mean-spirited, though–they tended to aim for spotlighting the absurd in human behavior/societal conventions.
Surely Green Acres wasn’t as surreal as Petticoat Junction, which took the place of the Sears catalog lingerie section as fantasy material for a whole generation of young boys.
Personally I grew up in the Daisy Duke era myself…
Oh, as far as Penneys, the department store strata when I was growing up was:
Penneys -> Sears -> Boston Store -> Gimbel’s
with things getting more upscale and expensive as you move up the line.
I still recall the joy with which the Christmas catalogs were anticipated each September…
I worked as a manager in the receiving department of this building in the ’70′s when it was still Gimbel’s flagship store. My oldest child was born while I worked there and I’ll always remember the warm congratulations of guys who unloaded the trucks. One of the older guys, an institution in the ‘cage’ where they put prices on the high value merchandise slipped a ten dollar bill into my hand ‘for the baby’. I’ve often wondered since then, how many hours pay that ten spot represented. BTW, Gimbels occupied all 11 floors of the building most as sales floors and there was no place for trucks to back in to unload. All merchandise for the store was unloaded at street level on pallets on the sidewalk and rolled into freight elevators for movement to the actual ‘receiving’ areas on the 11th and 4th floors and in the second level sub basement….yes, that’s what they called it and you had to walk past a trash incinerator with doors as big as the pit of hell to get to where I worked.
Reading about James Cash Penney always reminds me of this fact I read about him many years ago: Whenever he was interviewing a prospective hire, he would take the man to lunch. If the man salted his food before tasting it, he would not get the job, for that was a man who made decisions without getting the facts first.
Hmmm, how many people have heard the rumor that JC Penney stood for “Jesus Christ” Penney and was named that because the founder was a devout Christian. And that the name was only changed to Penney’s on his death when he couldn’t prevent it from happening anymore?