A Farewell to Mr. Paperback

   

Today I'm honored to present to you the first ever guest post on Pleasant Family Shopping! It’s written by Kendra Bird, a native of Bangor, Maine, anthropology student, avid retail history fan and a friend of this site from almost the very beginning.  For those from or familiar with Maine (especially the Bangor area), this will be of particular interest, but Kendra writes about something so many of us can relate to, regardless of location– the closing of a lifelong favorite store and the decline of the local mall. Shown above are some photos, vintage ads and articles she provided for this post. Enjoy!   

I went to say goodbye to my childhood bookstore today, but by the time I arrived, it was too late. The lights were off and the shelves, once bursting with books, magazines, gifts, stuffed animals and other items, were bare; some of them had even already been removed from the store’s now-lifeless confines. 

This wasn’t the first trip that I’d made to Mr. Paperback, located in Bangor, Maine’s 42-year-old Airport Mall, in the last week. Prior to today’s pilgrimage, I had wandered in a handful of times, purchasing various discounted items from the dwindling stock on its shelves. I had also been fortunate to acquire some memorabilia from the store itself; now in my possession are a number of rescued wooden signs that, for as long as I can recall, stood atop the various bookshelves, advertising the type of offerings present in each section. “SPORTS,” “HISTORY,” “CHILDREN 8-12,” some of them declare to no one in particular. Others, whimsically, show their age: “TIQUES & COLLECTIBLE,” one reads, while another proclaims, “ILDING CONSTRUCTIO.” One, perhaps poignantly, using hand-cut blue adhesive letters, reads simply: “MAINE.” 

Mr. Paperback was not just a bookstore…it was a local, independent bookstore, based here in Maine, with several locations around the state. At one time, its reach had been even more widespread, but some of the stores in the chain shuttered as the decades passed. The company had its origins in a downtown Bangor location, half a century ago, and the location to which I personally have such an attachment has been operational since its host mall opened its doors in 1970. Over the years, the mall saw each and every original tenant go out of business, or relocate -- some of them moving across town to the larger Bangor Mall, which opened in 1978 -- aside from Mr. Paperback, Radio Shack, and Doug’s Shop ’n Save; the latter is technically still in operation today as a state-of-the-art Hannaford supermarket, which is now the flagship anchor of the entire shopping center. 

Even in 1990, according to a supplement to the Bangor Daily News issue of April 26^th of that year, “only a few stores remain[ed] from the stores that [had] opened in the mall” twenty years earlier. Original anchors Freese’s and Woolco, both department stores (the first local to Bangor, the second a nationally-known discounter), were long gone, as were many of the mall’s interior names. Nevertheless, Mr. Paperback stayed in business, first absorbing the space belonging to Spencer’s Gifts, which had relocated to the Bangor Mall, and then part of an adjacent restaurant, the remainder of which is now a Rent-a-Center.

During the same year that the Airport Mall was celebrating its twentieth birthday, I was eight years old going on nine, and starting to purchase my own books and magazines with my allowance money. There were only two places that I regularly did this: Mr. Paperback, and the B. Dalton store that was in the Bangor Mall (astute followers of the ebbs and flows of retail will note that the B. Dalton chain has also met its demise). I vividly remember the day that I purchased my first issue of Disney Adventures magazine at the Airport Mall Mr. Paperback. I remember seeing it on the shelf, finding out that it had a Tale Spin comic in the back of it (back then, we didn’t use the terms “fangirl” or anything like that, but I totally was one in regard to that particular cartoon), and insisting to my parents that I purchase it. This was in the fall of 1990, and I was only nine years old, yet this memory is still etched prominently in my mind over two decades later.

Until today, the children’s magazines and comic books still filled that same section of shelving on the back wall, and, despite no longer belonging to that demographic, I would always wander by there whenever I stopped by the store. The shelves were the same, the carpet was the same (though it seemed to be held together with mailing tape in progressively more places over the years), the (I‘m assuming) anti-shoplifting mirrors that ran above the shelving along the back of the store were the same. I only knew one other store that had mirrors like that, predating the fancy cameras and whatnot that stores boast today: the Bangor Mall CVS, which is also no longer in operation.

Over the years, I have bought fewer and fewer books, despite being a voracious reader as a child. This is largely due to simply being too busy to read for leisure; academic pursuits and gainful employment take up the majority of my time, and what little reading that I do manage to do is predominantly related to my areas of study. Despite this, I did pick up one book last week during Mr. Paperback’s “Going out of Business” sale; it was a graphic novel, which is not a literary format that I typically gravitate towards (though my husband is a big comic book guy), but it looked appealing to me. I think back now to that day in the waning weeks of fall 1990 -- it was not the potential intellectual merit of Disney Adventures that leapt out at me; it was the comic in the back. So, too, was the root of my initial interest in Gene Luen Yang’s Level Up, which I read cover-to-cover a couple days later and found greatly enjoyable. Will it, decades from now, hold as firm a place in my memories as that now dog-eared Disney magazine from days long past?

 

The brick-and-mortar bookstore is an endangered species, much like another beloved institution of mine, the brick-and-mortar record store. Both of these are being replaced by commerce centered around electronic books (ewww!) and mp3s (yuck!) in exchange for physical formats. While I jest somewhat -- these media formats both have their uses and their merits, and I have been known to utilize both at various times -- there is nothing like holding a physical book in your hand, and seeing the words come alive with the turning of each page, or carefully placing a record on a vintage turntable and hearing its music, crisp and clean and warm, emanating from your speakers. That said, Mr. Paperback’s resilience in a dying industry, especially within the confines of a mall that has teetered on the precipice above “dead mall” status at least once or twice during its lengthy history, is nothing short of impressive. All good things do seem to find their way to eventual endings, though, and it is into the annals of history that the longstanding local book chain must now transition.

 

It is into those same annals of history, too, for the memories of Mr. Paperback that I hold so dear. All the bookstores that I frequented in my childhood are gone, as well as the stores at which I bought my first cassette tapes years ago. The Airport Mall itself, too, bears little resemblance to the mall that I grew up with, in which I went shopping with my mother, my grandmother, or other relatives. The closing of Mr. Paperback is almost the final death blow to the mall that I knew. Rines, the local women’s clothing store that my mother used to drag me into, despite my pleas to not have to endure another store full of clothes and devoid of toys? It’s now the county DMV office, though it bears many architectural vestiges of its former self. Twin City Coin, where I bought baseball cards with my dad as a kid? It’s now a sketchy establishment hawking “For Tobacco Use Only” paraphernalia. Dream Machine, the arcade that my brother and I used to take our report cards to in order to get free tokens for games? It’s now the “Maine Smoke Shop,” a considerably less-kid-friendly place. Freese’s Department Store? I bid farewell to that local legend back in the late 1980s, when a much younger version of myself peered through a darkened doorway into a lifeless store, where countertops and registers were covered by white cloths, almost like a room full of inanimate ghosts; this I vividly remember as the moment that I became interested in retail history, and the lives and deaths of individual stores, an interest that, obviously, remains with me now.

As Mr. Paperback goes gentle into that good night (apologies to Dylan Thomas), I find myself both regretful and relieved that work and academic obligations prevented me from getting to the store in time to say goodbye on this day, which I had been informed would contain its final hours of operation. It felt like I was in a film as I walked hastily into the mall after driving over directly from my workplace. I saw the darkness behind the plate-glass windows before I even rounded the corner. I knew it was over, and I was greatly saddened, but I also knew that I had been spared the inevitable emotional awkwardness of saying goodbye to a space that was so crucial to my childhood.

I snapped a few photos, peered wistfully through the glass into the darkened interior of the store, and walked back outside. I called my husband, told him I was at the Airport Mall, and said, “I didn’t make it in time.” He understood.

Some might find it silly, the act of saying goodbye to a place. But sentimentality is powerful, and while some are not burdened by it, others form great attachments to those things which provoke feelings of nostalgia -- the sights, sounds, tastes of our pasts -- the “good old days” that were rarely actually as good as we consider them to be in retrospect. I am in the latter camp, and I find no shame in that.

So farewell, Mr. Paperback. You will always have a place in my memories, and those, I’m sure, of many other people as well. 

Oh, and thanks for selling me that big computer desk for five dollars the other day, the one from the back room that had the cobwebs and price stickers from 1995 on it. It’s found a good home, I assure you.

Maybe someday, I’ll even write a book on it.

Mr. Paperback closed on March 26, 2012. The first photo is from their now defunct website, the others were taken by Kendra.  

Every Pound Custom Ground at A&P

Quick, name for me the one private label brand that through history has been most closely associated with A&P. Ah, “Ann Page Pickled Pigs Feet”, you say? Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not it. (Great guess, though!)

Even though the company started out as solely a merchant of tea, and 150 years after its founding still features the word “tea” in its name, the answer, of course, is coffee - “Eight O’Clock Coffee”, to be specific - a long-standing member of the pantheon of America’s legendary brands. For many people, the smell of fresh ground coffee and the sight of the huge in-store electric coffee grinders and the red and gold bags with the distinctive lettering constitute their fondest memories of A&P - long after they’ve moved away from an A&P, or A&P moved away from them.

Within a few short years after its 1859 founding, the company first introduced coffee. Eventually A&P’s house blend would come to be known as “Eight O’ Clock Breakfast Coffee”. The earliest use of this name that I’ve been able to find is in a small A&P ad that appeared in the May 27, 1888 edition of the Washington Post – “We recommend to all lovers of a cup of good coffee that they use our granulated Eight O’ Clock Breakfast Coffee which we sell at the low price of 25 cents per pound. Don’t fail to try it. For sale at all our stores.” Another line in the ad jumped out at me when I read it – “Coffee ground fresh with the aid of an electric engine.” Even today, the image of a manual hand-cranked coffee grinder is used in Eight O’Clock Coffee advertising, so it’s interesting to note that electric-motor driven grinders were indeed used in those long ago times.

Later on, the word “breakfast”, with its obvious limitations, was dropped from the brand name. In time, a legend formed around the creation of the name - that it was based on the times of day that people (in that era, at least) were most likely to drink coffee – 8 am and 8 pm.

Success was not long in coming, and soon several of A&P’s “tea company” competitors added coffee to their offerings. The book “That Wonderful A&P”, by Edwin Hoyt, cites the example of the Grand Union Tea Company, then known as Jones Brothers Tea Co., who introduced a line of “polished coffee”, in which their coffee beans were literally polished “to a shiny appearance”. Although this improved the taste not a bit, it made for an interesting, if bizarre, advertising angle. Hoyt quotes George Huntington Hartford’s advertising rebuttal on A&P’s behalf: “Positively no polishing matter is used in roasting our coffees. Our coffees are roasted and sold in their natural state, no ingredients whatever being used to make them glossy. BEWARE OF GLOSSY COFFEES!” Tell ‘em, George!

As coffee overtook tea as America’s most popular beverage in the early part of the 20th century, A&P, whose store count exploded in the ‘teens, found itself in a wonderful position to take advantage of the drink’s ever-growing popularity. For decades, Eight O’Clock Coffee would be the country’s largest selling coffee brand.

Having added a number of other coffee blends alongside their flagship Eight O’Clock brand through the years, A&P would eventually narrow their coffee lineup down to three main blends – “Eight O’Clock”, of course, the “mild and mellow” blend, “Red Circle”, the “rich and full-bodied” blend, and “Bokar”, the “vigorous and winey” blend (i.e.: the strong stuff.) In the early decades of the 20th century, each of the three brands had unique packaging.

In 1933, A&P introduced new, coordinated packaging for its three coffee brands. With bold colors – red for Eight O’Clock, yellow for Red Circle and black for Bokar - adorned with a gold band and a strikingly unique font, an American advertising icon was born. I’ve been unable to locate information on the designer A&P used, but would easily put it league with the best work of Raymond Loewy, designer extraordinaire, and the other great packaging designers of that golden era.

In the late 1930’s, Eight O’Clock coffee was hailed as the world’s top selling brand, and domestically, according to a 1935 Los Angeles Times article, A&P had three of the six bestselling brands – Eight O’Clock at number one, of course, with Red Circle ranked fourth and Bokar, sixth. Into the 1950’s, A&P’s share of the market remained strong, described variously as “one out of every six” or “one out of every four” cups of coffee served in the United States. (Today, one out of every six cups is consumed by me, when writing these posts.)

And so it continued for years, until A&P’s slow decline and exit from many of their major U.S. markets. Eight O’Clock’s fortunes were tied to A&P’s, of course, and as A&P began to contract its store footprint, the “number one” coffee crown would eventually pass to General Foods’ Maxwell House brand. (Currently, the largest individual selling coffee brand is Folger’s Classic Roast, with Maxwell House Original at number two, Starbucks at number three and Eight O’Clock Original at number nine, according to a recent CNBC survey. As far as overall sales go, Eight O'Clock is the largest selling bean coffee and the third largest overall brand in sales, according to their website.)

In the late 1970’s, A&P made an effort to shore up sagging profits through better use of its sprawling manufacturing operations. Through its subsidiary Compass Foods, A&P began to market its coffee brands to other chains, particularly in markets where they no longer had stores. In Chicago, for example, from which A&P pulled out in 1982, a cheery Chicago Tribune article proclaimed “Eight O’Clock coffee will stay in Chicago”, and would now be available at Jewel Food Stores.

The most important house brand manufactured by A&P would also be the last one they would hang onto. In 2003, A&P sold the Eight O’Clock brand to Gryphon, a San Francisco-based group of investors. In 2006, Gryphon sold the company to Tata, an Indian company that specializes in tea and coffee and owns the popular Tetley brand. Organized as “The Eight O’Clock Coffee Company” division, they have been very aggressive in marketing the famous old brand, adding several varieties and promoting it in new arenas – gas station convenience stores, for instance.
So, Eight O’Clock coffee might be as close as your nearest gas station! May have to drive a bit farther for those Jane Parker donuts, though…

The non-polished, yet glossy photos above depict various A&P coffee departments from the 1940’s and early 50’s. First is a 85th anniversary window display from Portland, Maine, followed by an iced coffee window display from Albany, New York. Next are two coffee department shots from Poughkeepsie, New York. The last shot is a bit more recent, from an unknown location, showing a common practice at the time - the placement of related magazine ads near the food displays. These local store publicity shots are part of a collection I bought a while back (Featuring, strangely enough, mostly A&P coffee displays. Not that I mind that!). Below are a group of wonderfully colorful A&P coffee ads from the 1930’s and 40’s, most of which are from Woman’s Day magazine, which was founded by A&P in 1942. These ads are from the Gallery of Graphic Design, a magnificent online collection of magazine advertising that is an absolute must-see. In that pre-television era, magazine ads were arguably the most important single vehicle for advertising to the mass market. The standard of artistry in these ads is high, to put it mildly.

Appropriately enough, the last ad, from 1938, has a Thanksgiving theme. An interesting year this has been, 2009. Great in some ways, difficult in others. I’m thankful for many things, though, and high on the list are those of you who read, enjoy and comment on this site. I hope yours is a wonderful one!

Matchless Memories of Mammoth Mart

The word “mammoth” calls to mind something big, huge, out of the ordinary. So the giant new discount stores must have seemed to folks who were used to shopping at the traditional “five and ten” - type variety stores that were a fraction of their size. It only makes sense, then, that one of these new “discount houses”, the upstarts of the retailing world, would adopt a “mammoth” as its trademark. And when it happened, did they choose an ancient woolly mammoth, with its ultra-long, curved tusks and generally terrifying appearance? Not at all. Instead, they went with a refined, genteel, bi-pedal elephant, smartly dressed in trousers, a sportcoat and tie. This friendly fellow was “Marty”, official mascot of Mammoth Mart, the late, great New England-based discount chain.

Quincy, Massachusetts native Max Coffman, the founder of Mammoth Mart, was born in 1910 to Russian immigrant parents. Coffman was one of those people of whom it could truly be said that retail was “in his blood”. Starting out as a grocery delivery boy, Coffman worked his way through high school and college performing a number of retail jobs. After four years with Enterprise, a Boston-area department store, Coffman joined Union Premier Food Stores, forerunner to Food Fair, where his responsibilities included overseeing the opening of new stores. In 1937, he joined Economy Grocery Stores, parent of Stop and Shop, a leading New England area chain. At Stop and Shop, Coffman’s responsibilities were once again centered on the company’s new store program. It was here that he learned the benefits of self-service, and especially of having a centralized checkout area at the front of the store - a practice that he would help pioneer later on for the discounting field, where it had previously been a foreign concept.

In 1941, Coffman, along with his brother-in-law Henry Gornstein, went into business for himself, opening an Army/Navy surplus store in Quincy. Problem was, with the outbreak of World War II, the supply of military surplus items had dried up, so Coffman stocked a variety of apparel, mainly work clothes, instead. The end of WWII in 1945 unleashed a flood of surplus items to the market, enabling Coffman to open five more surplus stores by 1948.

By the early 1950’s, as discussed numerous times on this site, a new form of retailer was springing up all over the New England area, known in the early days of the business as the “discount house”. Again, as mentioned, these new stores were often located in old, vacated factories that begged for tenants and were available for a song. J.M. Fields, Ann and Hope and Interstate Stores’ (who would later buy out Topps and White Front) first discount operation all began in this mold. While Zayre chose to come out of the box with new construction instead of the “mill building” approach, their merchandising approach bore some similarities to the aforementioned companies. The stores were very simple, often outfitted only with pipe racks and basic fixtures (as these chains became successful, much more sophisticated store designs would follow), but they made money hand over fist. Max Coffman was quick to recognize the potential of this new self-service, volume based, low price approach, and decided it was the route he needed to take.

In March 1956, the first “Mammoth Mart” (originally Mammoth Mills) was opened in a 51,000 square foot former foundry building in Framingham, Massachusetts. Robert Drew-Bear, in his book Mass Merchandising, describes the opening day scene, where there happened to be a “…very heavy snowfall. As a matter of fact, even the large searchlights were buried by the storm. Nevertheless, the buying public came to the store opening and a new era was born for Max Coffman and Mammoth Mart”.

The profitability of his Army/Navy surplus stores paled in comparison with that of the discount store, so Coffman soon closed them down in order to fully devote his resources to opening new Mammoth Marts. Coffman expanded cautiously, especially in the early years. “I wanted to get a good solid foundation established first”, he was quoted in the Drew-Bear book. In 1959, the second Mammoth Mart was opened in Bangor, Maine, with a third unit in Lewiston, Maine the next year. 1961 through 1965 saw the opening of an average of two new Mammoth Marts per year, and also the company‘s first public offering of stock. 1966 was the chain’s “breakout” year, so to speak, with the opening of six units, one of which replaced the original Framingham store.

The Mammoth Marts were located in strip shopping centers (except the free-standing Bangor unit), usually next door to a supermarket. The store size ranged from 42,000 to nearly 90,000 square feet. The stores’ merchandise mix, was heavily weighted towards apparel. In the early years, factory overruns and seconds were stocked. Drew-Bear’s book notes the chain’s private label brands, including “Princess Anne” for their nylon stockings. (Somehow, that just sounds better than “Mammoth” stockings, eh?) The company also operated their own shoe departments, a rarity in the discount industry where they were generally leased out to others. Small appliances, housewares, cameras, records and books helped round out the mix. Another feature of the stores were their snack bars, de rigueur for the time.

As the Mammoth Mart chain grew, so did Max Coffman’s reputation as a respected businessman, a fact acknowledged well outside his company’s New England trading area. In 1967, Coffman received the prestigious Horatio Alger Award, which he accepted that year alongside such other notables as Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famous heart surgeon, Lawrence Welk, and Ewing Kauffman, chairman of Marion Merrell Dow pharmaceuticals and soon-to-be founder of the Kansas City Royals.

Coffman’s retailing savvy also caught the attention of one Sam Moore Walton, operator of a small Arkansas discount chain with a big future. In his autobiography, entitled Made in America, Walton specifically mentioned Mammoth Mart. Sam called on the Mammoth Mart offices and was given a tour of the operation by Coffman’s son Jeffrey, which he recalled in his father’s obituary as reported by the Boston Globe - ''I showed him around," said Jeffrey. ''I was only 20 years old. Who knew what he would become?"

At the end of 1970, Mammoth Mart was in great shape. Seven new stores had been added, bringing the company total to 34. Two were located in Maine, one in Vermont, and the company’s first four stores outside of New England – Bel Air (suburban Baltimore), Maryland and Lumberton, Henderson and New Bern, North Carolina. A childrens’ clothing store division,”Boston Baby”, was started around this time.

On a personal note, Mammoth Mart is special to me because it’s one of a handful of classic retail chains outside of the Chicago area that I shopped at extensively. Throughout the 1970’s, my brother and I spent three or four weeks every August with our grandparents in North Smithfield, Rhode Island, where we frequently shopped at the Mammoth Mart at Park Square, an area of town located just on the edge of Woonsocket. It was located in an “L-shaped” shopping center along with a Star Market. A Kentucky Beef restaurant sat on the edge of the parking lot, which later became a Burger Chef. Many times we’d hit all three in the space of an afternoon. Across the street was an Almacs grocery store, a popular Rhode Island chain.

My favorite part of the Mammoth Mart, of course, was their record department, a welcome sight after those exasperating moments spent in the fitting rooms, trying on yet another pair of corduroys. The record department had a great cut-out bin, where I picked up a number of bargains. Without a doubt, the oddest album I found there was Yoko Ono’s 1973 double-album entitled “Approximately Infinite Universe” on the Beatles’ Apple label. It was a bit on the surreal side for Mammoth Mart – I remember thinking “What an ironic juxtaposition - How incongruent!” (Actually, being 12 or 13 at the time, it was more along the lines of “Man, this is weird!”) I didn't buy the album.

Getting back to the storyline, the retail landscape grew bleak for many discount and variety chains in the early 1970’s. Interstate Stores (Topps and White Front), Arlan’s, and Grants, among others, got into financial trouble, leading to the eventual closure of those chains. The stagflation of the American economy caught many retailers flatfooted, especially those with older stores or less than stellar merchandising. Some chains did well, including Kmart on the national level, and local competitors Ames and Caldor. Unfortunately, Mammoth Mart ended up in the former category.

In June 1974, Mammoth Mart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The ten “Boston Baby” stores were closed. Happily, (unlike many other chains) the company emerged from it six months later, and shortly thereafter resumed payments of dividends to its shareholders. In April 1977, a “secret suitor” made an offer to buy out the 51-store Mammoth Mart chain. The “secret suitor” was soon revealed to be King’s Department Stores, Inc., a Boston area discounter (ironically founded in 1956, the same year the first Mammoth Mart, and headquartered in Brockton, Mass, Mammoth Mart’s original corporate home) with 121 stores along the eastern seaboard. The deal was finalized in August 1977. Mammoth Mart was no more.

The next year, King’s was set to merge with W.R. Grace and Company, a firm best known for chemical production but had recently acquired a number of retailers – Herman’s World of Sporting Goods, Sheplers Western Wear and Handy City hardware, to name a few. The merger failed to go through, and King’s more or less faded away over the next few years, closing most of its stores, including several former Mammoth Marts. In August 1982, King’s parent company, KDT Industries, went bankrupt, selling its remaining 42 stores to Ames the following year.

Max Coffman, Mammoth Mart’s founder and early discounting pioneer, spent his post Mammoth Mart years in real estate ventures and philanthropy. Mr. Coffman passed away in 2005 at the age of 95.

The North Smithfield Mammoth Mart I referred to earlier was torn down around 1990 (the store, of course, had closed much earlier) along with the Star Market. A Super Stop and Shop was built in their place. The Burger Chef was torn down to make room for expanded parking. The Almacs across the street closed along with the rest of the chain in 1995. A Hollywood Video store and an Ocean State Job Lot (which is actually a very interesting store – I visited it for the first time last year) now occupy the building. Time sure marches on.

And as for “Marty”, the retired Mammoth Mart elephant mascot? Last I heard, he was living a quiet life at his place on the Cape.

The photos above, from a 1962 trade ad, show the brand-new 88,000 square foot Mammoth Mart in Brockton, Massachusetts. Mammoth Mart was headquartered in Brockton, “home of (champion boxer) Rocky Marciano”, as Max Coffman proudly told a UPI interviewer in 1965. The company’s HQ was later moved to nearby West Bridgewater. Here are a couple of links of interest - a list of the Mammoth Mart locations, and a nice photo of the Scarborough, Maine Mammoth Mart circa 1967.