Back To School Shopping

One of the writing prompts today from Mama's Losin' It! is to share a back to school memory.  Now you know since I am a bit older these memories go way, way back to that dusty file cabinet I call my brain.  

Back to school memory, well that takes me to many back to school memories that were basically the same every single year.  Shopping for school clothes and some of the battles that ensued.  First of all we weren't the richest people so Granny bought most of our back to school attire, including a new coats and shoes.  The shopping destination was in Tulsa, and since we lived in Broken Arrow that was an all day excursion, drive time, shopping time and EATING time.  Our usual stomping grounds was the Sears store at 21st & Yale and I think the only place around for that kind of thing.  There were a few stores in Broken Arrow for clothes shopping but they were mostly jeans, boots, you know, country-cowboy-country living kind of clothes.  And for goodness sake we lived on Main Street, we were city kids...Hahahaha!  Sears had everything you could imagine, much like the Sears catalog that you would get before there was an actual store.  Since it was in the 60's and 70's the dress code were mostly dresses and sweet sweaters for little girls.  That also meant sensible play shoes like Mary Jane's, socks, panties and slips.  For Bro it was jeans, shirts, underwear, socks and tennis shoes.  We would also be able to get one fancy dress or dress clothes for the dressier kind of days and of course a brand new coat if it was needed.  It was exhausting for all of us but such fun to walk into the two-story Sears store.  They had an escalator and we thought that was great fun.  If I remember correctly the girls section was on the first floor and the boys upstairs, but I could be wrong.  We didn't go upstairs often.  It was fun to play in the round racks of clothes but boy could we get in trouble if we got lost.  When I was younger my mother had a hard time keeping track of me.  I would just take off and would be lost with usually them calling her name over the PA system.  I was a mess.  One time though Mother thought she would teach me a lesson and let me get lost but she had a bead on me.  She got far enough away that I started to panic because I couldn't find her.  It turned into full blown panic.  That one incident must have triggered something in me that made me a mother hen.  After that I would absolutely herd my brother and sister if they even thought of wandering off.  I still have a horrible fear of being lost, getting lost.  Especially in airports.  

The best thing about back to school shopping was going to the Sears Cafeteria for lunch.  We rarely ate out, also restaurants were few and far between, especially in Broken Arrow and goodness knows we didn't drive to Tulsa to eat out.  It was such a treat to eat in the cafeteria.  We either had the fried fish or hamburgers.  It was just heaven.