Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire self destruction through poor management

Free-standing structures.

I recall an old joke about a cowboy wanting to order TP for out on the trail. He mailed Sears asking for it. Sears mailed back requesting the catalog number. He then mailed back if he had the catalog he wouldn't need the TP.

When I was overseas in the Navy in the mid 1960s,the Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs were our best friends. Our PX was small, and the local markets were very limited. We had to order almost everything and wait about 3 months for the stuff to arrive. It was all shipped by surface vessel in those days.

I had an aunt that lived in one of those Sears houses. Pretty decent structure for the money. A lot of that depended on who assembled it on site. They weren't panelized or pre-assembled parts but just a load of pre-cut lumber and a set of plans to put it together.

Myron

If you look at many of those houses, you will find a bathroom in a room between 2 bedrooms. They were designed with a closet between the bedrooms and no bathroom. Outhouses were still the rule. Later, people converted the closets into bathrooms. I've seen quite a few that way, in fact I once owned one.

Rock Chuck,

My aunt's house had a bathroom, but darned if I can remember where it was located.

Do you remember what was underneath the stairway to the second floor ? Was it a closet or was there a stairway to the cellar under it ?

I don't know how much leeway there was to re-arrange the floor plan in those things.

Myron

The space under a stairway was often storage, either drawers or cupboards.

I owned one in Twin Falls, and the bathroom was indeed between the kitchen and a bedroom on the first floor, and in what was pretty obviously a converted closet upstairs.

The plumbing "conversion" in the basement to accommodate the upgrade would have made Medusa rage with jealousy.......

Mom and dad moved us four kids back to the US from England in 1970. Coming from England as we did with few means money was tight, they rented a two-bedroom house, the one we would live in until I was away in college years later.

My father, who worked construction, became disabled two years later after we arrived here and could not work. Having spent most of his working life since 1947 in England (where he moved out of love for my mother, finally prevailing upon her to return here) he was eligible for very little social security.

Fortunately my mother had got a job selling auto parts at Sears, full time with benefits. That job kept the roof over our heads and gave her a modest but steady retirement 25 years later.

I don't recall we ever took public assistance, but if we had come to this country in 1990 instead of 1970 my mom would have been working two or three part-time jobs, and we would have been on food stamps.

So I too have a high regard for the Sears, Roebuck and Co. of a bygone era. Pretty much all my clothes came from there too

Birdwatcher

I have 2 bolt action .22 rifles. They're identical in all respects except one: one's stamped Marlin and the other Sears. The parts are all interchangeable. You can find many makes of stuff with the Sears, Kenmore, or Craftsman names. They never made anything but contracted to have their name on everything.

Or bedrooms for orphan nephews with magical powers.

Not true. Sears actually bought a gun company in 1905 and from then until 1918 they made their own guns.

Remember Teddy Ballgame's name on their firearms?

Dad had a Ted Williams shotgun. I don't know who made it.

When I was about 4 in the early 50's, Dad bought a Craftsman carpenters level when he added on to our house. 40 years later, he gave it to me. I was using it to build a fence and nothing came out right. I discovered that one of the vials wasn't level any more. I took it to Sears to see if they could get a new vial for it. They couldn't but they gave me a new level. The department manager apologized because the replacement wasn't as good as my original but it was the best they carried.

My grandfather worked for Sears for 45 years (1941-1986). Lived a good middle-class life, had a lake house, retired well.

It's sad to see what Sears has become. They got rid of the catalog business at just the wrong time. If they had held on to it just a few more years, it would have been an easy transition into an internet model in the late 90's/early 2000's, and they would have beat lots of other retailers to the punch.

For anyone that thinks Sears is gonna make a comeback or might be a good investment, you need to Google "Sears Re-Insurance". That's the company ol' Fast Eddie Laempert set up to shift all the good real estate holdings into. He also owns the Kenmore/Craftsman/Die Hard names, so he gets a " royalty" on all the merch sold, even if Sears itself doesn't make much of a profit on it.

He has also loaned Sears his own money on occasion. My guess is, that he has made himself a "secured" creditor, so that he will receive whatever money/value Sears has left in a bankruptcy, while the stockholders and others are left with nothing.

Didn't the fishing reels have a ball players name on it?

Sears sells online but I don't know who's crazy enough to order from them. Their prices are 10 to 20% higher than anyone else out there.

A lot of the sporting goods stuff was branded as "Ted Williams". The shotgun my uncle had was made by Hi-Standard. Of course, JC Higgins was the other brand name commonly used on sporting goods. Craftsman lathes were made by Atlas. I re-built engines using kits from both Sears and Montgomery Wards.
In Canada, Simpson-Sears, Woodwards, Eatons, and Hudsons Bay stores have all gone the same way; source from China and try to compete with Walmart. All failed or are failing. Of course, the sad thing is that nobody wants to sell quality because nobody wants to buy quality. The market place and infrastructure have changed drastically over the last fifty years and this is what we have. I struggle to find air and oil filters for my vehicles which are not made in China. To me, the companies which have exported those jobs are treasonous and don't deserve my business. It is one thing to deliberately buy something made in China and quite another to buy and pay for a good American brand only to find "Made in China" stamped on it. As I pointed out to the guy in the Snap On van, I can buy all sorts of Chinese tools with lifetime warranties but when I pay a premium for Snap-On or Blue Point, I expect to not be buying Chinese. When I buy Echlin electronics, it burns my butt to see that they are sourced from China. GD

We're in a throwaway society. My cell phone has a broken lens, held together only by the plastic anti-scratch film. I only paid about $75 for it but a replacement lens costs $100. When it falls apart, I'll buy a new phone.

sears used to be a life-time job. they paid excellent wages and had great bennies. my buddy worked there and made something like $6/hr when everyone else was making $2.75. well run, orderly stores with great merchandise. fuggen chinese killed them though.

on a side note, i have a craftsman 18HP briggs 2 cyl tractor with a 6 speed hi/lo diff from the early 80's. what a beast. it sounds like a harley when it idles and will haul a serious load of firewood. i am stockpiling spare parts and will keep it as long as i'm alive. compare it to the schit they sell now.

Dvdegeorge and Scott F both nail it. At one tine Sears did sell quality items and service. Note also the comments on career people with pensions. They then decided on a markets strategy of trying to offer Walmart prices and still a bit of service but now use minimum wage part time staff that just don't have any skin in the game. They could have become Walmart and you haul your own mattress home or you become smaller and cater to the customer that cares for quality and service, though that's a much smaller market these days. Sorry I see it more of a marketing issue is than an accounting issue.