Rabid Fun: In 1947...

Last night Ginny and I warped presents.

Since I had about a hundred dollars to spend and 13 people I wanted to give gifts to, I did most of my shopping at a thrift store.

Shopping exhausts me. I gave out and had to stop—that reminded me of something that happened to my grandmother…

Back in 1947, my grandmother—her name was Matilda, but everyone called her Mam—went Christmas shopping at Cohen Brother’s, then Jacksonville’s finest department store.

The St. James Building, constructed by architect Henry Klutho, now houses Jacksonville’s City Hall, but back in 1947, Cohen’s occupied the building. The department store was famous for it’s animated Christmas windows and people made special trips downtown just to see their displays. Their candy shop offered chocolate-covered strawberries the size of coffee mugs! They had a bookstore which carried archaeology books. Ladies’ toiletries. Crystal. China. Mink stoles. A tea room. Cohen’s was a complete mall in one store…

And it even featured Jacksonville’s first escalator!

What a thrill.

So Mam had $50 for her Christmas shopping. That was big bucks back in those days, Fifty Dollars was.. She planned to shop in style at Cohen Brothers. She planed to buy presents for me and my brother, David. For my parents. For her sister, Grace, and her brother, Waverly. And for their children.

Mam wore her finest—stockings, heels, hat and gloves—back in those days a lady dressed to go shopping at Cohens. Gloves were mandatory for shoppers of Mam’s generation.

It was a hot December day in Florida. Temperature in the high 80s.

Mam rode the bus downtown to Hemming Park, in those days the bus terminal right across the street from Cohen’s.

She walked over to admire the animated display windows.

Did she ride the escalator up?

I don’t remember.

But Mam fainted inside the store.

Remember she was an old lady back then; she must have been at least 40.

But she fainted on the floor. The floorwalker called an ambulance. The medics checked her out. Just overheated.

They charged her $50 and put her in a taxi home.

Without a single present.

All her money spent.

As a seven-year-old kid, I didn’t understand why she was so upset.