Thoughts of Christmases past don't wake me deep in darkness, they don't haunt my dreams, they don't rise from the mist of a bowl of late night gruel. I haven't heard any chains rattling.These are warm and fuzzy thoughts, ones that clearly and routinely march right on through my consciousness every single season.
The Globe Store, seen at left in 1991, was the center of our universe way back when, at least at Christmastime. In acknowledgment of my Boy Scout Oath, let me level with you in saying that I poached the photo, having no idea whose it is.
As with so many other damned shames in my life, it's a damned shame I have no photos of my own of The Globe, even though I had to have passed the store on a regular basis for well in excess of twenty years with camera gear in my car or truck. Heck, I grew up no more than a twenty minute walk from the store. As a kid old enough to go "downtown" on my own, three different cranky old Scranton Transit Company buses passed near home hourly, each one could have dropped me at The Globe's front doors, and there were many front doors, revolving and standard, one of which was a direct connection to store's basement and the world that awaited there.
You'd have to suppose that most of us never bothered to take a picture or two because, well, because of one simply stupid notion - The Globe would always be there, right?
In 1994, all holders of the same notion were disabused of that foolishness when The Globe shut down, cutting loose 400 employees, its assets seized by a bank that for generations had literally been the store's neighbor.
Although it might be a bit hard to believe, here and now after fifteen years of being Globe-less, The Globe was initially an anchor tenant of the newly built Mall at Steamtown, connected to the mall itself by the walkway that still spans Lackawanna Avenue.
In an act that now looks like no more than appeasement, the mall's builders, or maybe backers, or maybe city leaders, insisted The Globe be included in the deal and become an easily accessible extension of the mall. Or, when you really take an honest look at things, it might have been little more than a gesture of fondness, of sentimentality for an institution that had played such a major role in the lives of Scrantonians for nearly one hundred years.
So, why no Globe? That's not all that tough a question to answer.
We could pick over the bones of The Globe's failure to stay current with merchandise, to stock that which people were demanding by the late '80s and early '90s. To make that statement would be no lie. So much in our society is bound tightly to relevance. Once those bindings come undone, relevance slips away. The Globe was yet one more victim of slipping relevance.
A movement that had begun over twenty years previous finally caught up with and consumed The Globe, and hundreds of others like it across the country. The shock is not so much that they failed, but rather that Scranton's Globe Store sustained as long as it did.
We've all heard about "...no stopping an idea whose time has come." That sentence needs a second phrase, which should be, "...and there's no saving an idea whose time is up, over, and done."
The great American downtown department store is largely gone, save for our very own Boscov's in Wilkes-Barre. Here's wishing all there a prosperous and very busy holiday shopping season.
I still want to walk up to The Globe's Toyland and see Santa sitting with a pile of kids all goggle-eyed waiting to sit on his lap. No doubt about it, I'd tell a grand jury this under oath; The Globe always had the best Santa Claus in town.
With no shame, I miss The Globe, and miss it very much.
Merry Globe Store memories to all...
