Where we shopped: North Star Mall, Wonderland, Terrell Plaza, downtown Joske's

San Antonio offered plenty of shopping destinations.  “Going to the mall” was both pastime and entertainment.  We often went out shopping with absolutely no agenda other than wanting to see what new merchandise had arrived since the last visit, usually no more than a week previously.  We went out shopping frequently and took all the time we wanted.  We often bought absolutely nothing and dinner was late to the table.  My mother and I would come rushing in the door after a spree and find my poor father whipping up scrambled eggs in the kitchen.

We dressed well to go shopping.  It was not casual.  We wore full regalia of dress, girdle and hose, with pumps (matching purse too of course).  Our hair was washed and set before we ventured out.

The premier downtown San Antonio store was Joske’s of Texas, a multi-level art deco wonder with escalators, the first I had ever ridden.   At Christmas, its basement became a Christmas and winter wonderland, and a huge Santa perched on a corner of the roof.  For many San Antonio children, it was one of the best Christmas experiences of their childhood.  Frost Brothers also had a downtown store, reminiscent of the multi-level New York City downtown department stores.

On the way to Joske’s, we meandered down Broadway.  Our first stop was often The Shoe Box, a charming little Alamo Heights establishment with high end shoes just for teen girls.  The building was even girly pink.  We then maneuvered toward the huge back East parking lot (later dredged out to make the present-day River Center) of Joske’s downtown.  At the back main entrance was the shoe department, with nearby purses and accessories.  To get to the clothes, you took the escalators upstairs.  If you purchased something in the store (it didn’t matter what) the sales people would stamp your parking ticket and make it free.  If we found nothing, we bought a pecan log in the floor level candy department.

Sometimes we walked a bit on the downtown streets and Alamo Plaza, especially if the organ grinder, or hurdy gurdy man was out.  The organ grinder turned a handle on the side on his box organ on a pole and attracted people around him with a clever capuchin monkey in a vest and shriner style hat.  My mother always gave me a penny to give to him.  The capuchin would take it in his tiny leathery fingers, deposit it in a box and tip his hat to me.  I adored that monkey and gave him every penny my mother could manage to spare out of her purse.

The downtown streets were also full of pigeons, which fascinated me with their iridescent throats and tiny pink legs and feet.  I nearly met my maker near Commerce Street when I ran into traffic after a pigeon.  My mother jerked me back in the nick of time.  I had been so determined to catch a fine, fat one.  They mingled at your feet and didn’t fly away!

That downtown Joske’s rivaled the New York City department stores.  All of my life, I had heard of the fabled Macy’s in NYC.  When I finally made it to the big city, Macy’s was one of our first stops.  Sure, Macy’s was great, but it wasn’t that much better than our own Joske’s of Texas, “the greatest store in the greatest state” as the jingle went.  The jingle had started out “the biggest store in the biggest state”, but when Alaska joined the union in the late 50s, it had to be changed.

A trivial but interesting fact about Joske’s was that Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth the Second) mail ordered part of her honeymoon trousseau from none other than Joske’s.  That was quite an honor. 

Nearer to our home was the Terrell Plaza Shopping Center on Austin Highway, just west of Vandiver Road.  Terrell Plaza got most of our business as it was convenient and covered all of the bases for young middle class families.  It was anchored by the American State Bank (where we banked), and a Wyatt’s cafeteria where we ate several times a month.  Wyatt’s ran a constant special:  all you can eat for $1.00.  It was a buy, even back then.  A family of four could eat for $4.00 plus tax, and the food was decent.  Moving on up the mall was a Satel’s men’s store and a Robinson’s women’s store.  Satel’s was high end and sold quality merchandise.  Every year or so, my mother would drag Wes into the Satel’s and buy something dressy and make him wear it.  Wes hated Satel’s.  He would rather have shopped at Chess King or the Army Navy Store. 

 Robinson’s was a completely different story.  This store had class, and lots of it.  The saleswomen made it a point to memorize customer names.  It was an expensive store and not just everyone walked in there and bought anything.  The selection was small, but every dress on the rack was gorgeous.  In the back, they had a smaller junior department.  You could always go into Robinson’s and find something you loved.  You might not be able to afford it though.  Robinson’s had a good strategy for drawing in the teen shoppers.  They had a Teen Board and you had to try out for it.  We all frequented the junior section, hoping to be noticed.  If you had the “look” (cute, normal weight, well-dressed) you were invited to fill out an application and a letter would arrive in a week or so inviting you to the tryouts held at a Country Club on Contour Drive.  Only the most poised and polished young ladies were chosen out of the herd to be the next year’s Teen Board.  The selection process was short and sweet.  You walked up and down in front of the panel of judges and stated your name and age.  Next, please. 

Nearby was a Gordon’s jewelers and around the corner was Dick’s Hobby Shop, every young boy’s dream.  Dick’s sold go-carts and model kits for everything under the sun, including airplanes, boats  and cars.  These were detailed model kits that required determination and skill to put together.  It was a project that often took weeks and was not for the faint hearted or anyone who gave up easily.

 

Near to Dick’s was an optometrist with a great sense of humor.   He fitted me in my first pair of cat-eyes.  He also fitted my visiting grandmother and when she presented her check to pay him drawn on the Knippa, Texas, Trading Company, he joked that he would have to take out his fee in wolf pelts.

The premier store of Terrell Plaza was the JC Penney.  In our day, JCP was most definitely a lower end bargain type establishment.  It could not even approach the quality or stylishness of Joske’s or Frost Brothers or other higher end stores, but it was an absolutely great place to shop.  JCP had everything:  clothes, shoes, fabric, towels, sheets, draperies.., and at a price you could afford.  If you dug long enough through the clothing racks, you could dress yourself quite decently.  Our family spent a great deal of time, and money, at JCP.  It was the staple of our family shopping for as long as we lived in the area.  My mother had established credit there, and we whipped out that card a lot.

Next to JCP was a Neisner’s Five and Dime establishment.  This was another great store, but of a different kind.  Here you could find smaller furniture, pets, school supplies, toys, paper goods, housewares ….. My Barbie doll came from here as well as a troll doll and a pair of parakeets, green and blue, named Pete and Gladys.

The next large store was White’s Department Store, which was a full line furniture store, along with lawn mowers and appliances.

Working down the shopping center, customers could literally find anything they needed, including groceries at a full sized HEB.  The HEB was not quite as high end as the Handy Andy down the street, but covered all the bases.  At that time, HEB was a fledgling grocery store and not the giant retailer that it has become today.  At the check-out counters, they had unique circular conveyer belts.  We begged our mother to take us there so we could watch our groceries round the circle before the checker started grabbing them.   Being a checker was not easy.  Accurate prices had to be read and manually entered into the cash register.  Produce had to be weighed on a scale, and the amount per pound matched up to the weight.

Terrell Plaza was set up as an open mall concept.  When you crossed over from the White’s and HEB, you found Patt’s drug store, Silvey Music, Merle Norman Cosmetics, a Studer’s Photography studio where we had ALL of our pictures made.  In these days, you only got about two or three shots to choose from and had to wait almost a week before your proofs arrived.  You paid a sitting fee whether or not you liked the proofs.  You were stuck with the pictures, even if they were mediocre.

Directly across from the JCP was a Thom McAnn’s shoe store.  We didn’t frequent Thom McAnn very much and bought most of our shoes at JCP.  But before it was Thom McAnn, it was a Red Goose Shoe Store, which we did frequent.  I hounded my mother to take me there because if you bought a pair of shoes, the clerk would take you over to an enormous red goose in the middle of the store and it would lay a golden, plastic egg.  I treasured my golden egg for years before it disappeared.   Red Goose Shoes showed commercials on television regularly with the catchy jingle:

Half the fun of having feet are red goose shoes!

As we grew a bit older, we developed a definite taste for the main north San Antonio malls:  North Star Mall and Wonderland.  They were a place we just often went to walk from one end to the other, whether or not we needed anything.

The North Star Mall opened in 1960 and my family was probably one of its first visitors.  We were absolutely addicted to going there at least once a week, often on Saturdays but on school nights too, and especially during summer vacations.  I learned the place like the back of my hand.  It was a great place to haul your kids and entertain them for an afternoon or day, and that is exactly what my mother did, and often.   Going to the Mall was free, and cool in the summer to boot, unlike our home.  Gas was cheap, so we could drive out there whenever we felt like it and comb through all the stores.

The original mall was probably half the size it is at present.  You entered the original building through the sloping East parking lot, and went up a short flight of stairs directly into Wolff & Marx, a small but high-end department store.  In the early days of that Mall, Wolff & Marx had absolutely no interest for me as I was not into clothes (YET!).  As you cut on through, you came out into the true Mall with its huge cage of very noisy Mynah birds.  You could spend a lot of time just watching the birds hoot and hop.  If I remember correctly, there was a lot of jungle type foliage that surrounded the cage.  Military basic trainees on a weekend escape taught the mynah birds to wolf whistle.

Other original stores from those early days were the big Kress store, chock full of junk and anything you needed, at a price you could afford and one of the few inexpensive stores at the mall.   Across the way was the higher end Guarantee Shoe Company, and the lower-end Lerner’s.  Lerner’s was a lot like JCP in those days.  It offered racks upon racks of clothes, most of it pretty reasonable in price, and a good place for mothers to shop for growing children.  Also close by was Carl’s, another much smaller and pretty high end store.  My mother bought me a boxy little girls’ suit with a pleated skirt at Carl’s which she probably could not afford.  I absolutely detested it, but she made me wear it anyway.  Why would any little girl want to wear a suit?  I am not sure if the Shoe Box had appeared yet, but that was more of a high school store.  They always had the trendiest styles which were the patent leather pumps with square toes and little stacked heels.  On up the mall, we always stopped at the Pet Pantry that featured a little bridge you walked over to enter the store.  Here you encountered a scarlet macaw just out in the open on his perch.  He was a huge, spectacular creature.  For those who have never been around parrots, they are intensely intelligent and observant.  The minute you walked into that store, the macaw was giving you the once over.  He (or she?) missed nothing.  That pet store also had the most beautiful assortment of dog collars.  A lot of them were velveteen with little jewel studs.  I had never seen such a thing.

At the far west end of the original mall was a Walgreen’s store.  We didn’t go there much, but they did have a lunch counter and you could order hamburgers.  Right across the way from the Walgreen’s was the Luby’s where everyone DID go.  There was always a line there, except for maybe 3:00 in the afternoon.  You could count on waiting in it for at least 15-20 minutes.  You went down one direction and could look over everything that was being served, and then double back in the actual line and be ready to make selections.

The first huge North Star renovation/addition was the Frost Brothers wing on the east side, close to McCullough Avenue.  It had a lot of stores besides Frost Brothers, but the entire wing was named “Frost Brothers AND the mall.”  How snotty, we thought, but it never prevented us from shopping Frost Brothers.   It was simply elegant.  Frost Brothers was arranged “pod” style with the shoes, ladies clothing, fabrics, and lingerie being off in their own little niches.  The staff treated you like royalty, whether you bought anything or not.  How I loved being ushered by an attentive saleslady into their dressing rooms with a three way mirror, wallpaper and an upholstered couch for my mother to sit on while I modeled dresses for her.

 

The Cinema 1 and 2 movie theaters followed, and were built in the East parking lot, right outside the Frost Brothers wing.  For many years, they were outside entrance theatres.  There were two screens and two movies to choose from.  We were so impressed.  It was the Cinema theatres that showed “Gone with the Wind” when it was rereleased in 1969.  It was packed with people.

In 1968 or 1969, the Joskes wing was built (and Cinema 1 and 2 became inside theatres).  This just about ate up the rest of the property out to McCullough.  We always did a tremendous amount of shopping at the North Star Joskes, especially the after Christmas sales.  It was smaller than the downtown store, but still large enough to serve our needs.  No longer did we have to drive all the way downtown!

I was no longer living in San Antonio when the iconic boots arrived, but I still visited the mall during my Austin years and found them impressive.  I read later that an enterprising homeless dude actually made one of them his home for quite a few months before he was discovered and run off!

The mall of course is almost unrecognizable today from what it was in that era.    When they did the last be redo of the Frost Brothers wing, they retained and moved a lot of those beautiful stairways that led up to the second level of that wing.  The one I remember best was circular, and was originally placed right in front of the old Frost Brothers entrance.

Some weekends we decided on a change and headed out to Wonderland on the Northwest side.  It was only about eight miles on out, but always seemed like the longest drive.  By the time you finally arrived, even on Loop 410, you felt you had driven half way to El Paso.  Most of the area around Wonderland was still mesquite and brush covered hills.

Wonderland was a multi-level mall.  We always began on the North end with the huge Montgomery Ward, or Monkey Ward as we called it.  Monkey Ward was the twin of Sears.  You could find anything there, and it was usually reasonable in price.  They also did a catalog which we had delivered to our home every year.  We did a lot of catalog ordering.  There was a great candy counter where we discovered white chocolate stars.  We always had to stop there and buy a bag full of them.  Monkey Ward was one of the few stores I recall having a candy counter.  The store was strong for furniture, which was quality and lasted.  They also had a huge selection of clothes, like JCP.

During these years, my father smoked a pipe and Monkey Ward had a great pipe selection.  We visited there every Christmas and selected a new one for him.

We never frequented the rest of the Wonderland shops very much, with the exception of Rhodes and its glass elevator.  Rhodes was another high end store with merchandise as nice as, if not better than, Frost Brothers.  It was a much smaller store, though.   We went there mainly to ride that charming glass elevator up and down.  You could park underneath the Rhodes and catch the glass elevator underneath.  I often shopped Rhodes for my classy little purses to match my shoes.

At the other end of Wonderland was a Handy Andy grocery store where many shoppers ended their day buying the family groceries.  When you finished and paid, you were issued a number.  You brought your car up to the store’s curb and grocery boys were waiting there with your cart of groceries ready to load you up.

If you went to Terri, Jr. on North McCullough, a small clothing store that catered only to teen girls, you might get your picture in the paper.  I went there numerous times and lingered around, hoping to get selected, but it never happened.  If they picked you, you appeared in a small ad in the newspaper with a write-up on how cool you were, and just the right type of girl who shopped at Terri, Jr.

At the corner of Broadway and Loop 410 was Scrivener's, built in 1945.  What can you say about Scrivener's other than it was one of the coolest stores to ever serve San Antonio.  There was nothing like it, and probably never will be.  Scrivener's had started as a full service lumber and hardware store.  My parents often shopped there for building and home supplies.  The hardware department was small but well stocked with both staple items and unique finds.

Scrivener's greatest attraction for me was the fabric department which had been one of the first retailers for Comal Cottons.  There was nothing like it in the city.  You could literally find anything you wanted from the most basic cottons to the sheerest and finest of wools for suits.  Evening wear fabric was another strength, and their trim and ribbon section most likely rivaled the garment district in New York City.  Whereas JCP or Joske's might have 50-60 colors of thread to choose from, Scrivener's would have well over 100 colors.  If you couldn't match your thread there, you couldn't match it anywhere.  Their fabrics were not cheap, but were fortunately placed frequently on sale when we would stock up.  Tucked into the middle of the store was a crafts and needleworks section.

Scrivener's did not stop with hardware and fabrics.  New wings were bumped out constantly to house a small, exclusive tea room, along with high end clothing and purses, and a baby's section.  It was a store where you could browse and entertain yourself for hours.

Across the street from Scrivener's, a Gulf Mart store sprang up around 1961 or 1962.  It was one of the first discount stores to open in the city.  Gulf Mart featured almost everything:  clothes, housewares, school and art supplies, and groceries, all at prices lower than surrounding merchants.  It was a huge store with a lot of business.  It was much like an early Wal-Mart.