Memories of 'The Big Store'

Former employees say O.T. Johnson's a great place to work, shop

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

By AMEE BOHRER

The Register-Mail

The one time center of downtown became a focal point again Monday as it burned down.

"There's too many people today who just don't have any idea of the significance of (the O.T. Johnson building )," said local historian Tom Wilson. "Everything in downtown Galesburg centered around the central business area, and the central business area centered around O.T. Johnson's."

The store was patronized by American literary icon Carl Sandburg, and Jack Reagan, the father of President Ronald Reagan, was an employee of the shoe department in 1915, Wilson said. Ronald Reagan attended first grade and part of second grade in Galesburg.

The store even won a mention in Carl Sandburg's 1952 book, "Prairie-Town Boy," as confirmed by Helga Sandburg, his daughter, of Cleveland, Ohio.

"I went straight to my dad's book," Sandburg said when she heard that the store her father had held poetry readings in was no more than rubble after a fire destroyed the building early Monday morning. She found the passage on pages 35 and 36.

"I did think that was very sweet that he had been there as a kid," Sandburg said. "I didn't know Galesburg that much. It's nice that my father refers to it."

The store made even more of an impression locally, as it was the centerpiece of downtown business for many years in its storied history.

"People who worked there took such pride in the fact that they had a job there," Wilson said.

The building that burned Monday was constructed in 1904, although O.T. Johnson started the business in 1862 after buying another building for the original store.

The structure that housed the 60,000-square-foot O.T. Johnson building closed its doors in 1978, and now the doors of the newer incarnation of the building, East Main Antiques, are gone.

Three former employees testify that, indeed, their former jobs in retail at O.T. Johnson were a source of pride for them over the years.

Twyla Pickard remembers helping to close the store in 1978, packing boxes with surplus merchandise and sealing them with tape. She is now working at another downtown store, Mimi's on Seminary Street.

"I was one of the last people that worked there," Pickard said of O.T.'s She started there in November 1967 and finished when the store closed in January 1978. "That was a sad day."

During that decade, she began her retail career doing part-time seasonal Christmas work, and eventually was promoted to buyer for the women's sportswear department, where she worked during her last three years.

"That was a wonderful, wonderful store," Pickard said. "You could go there and you could do everything."

She remembers there was an entire department devoted to hats, another for hosiery.

Today, she still owns the old-fashioned copper fire extinguisher with brass plates she bought there, one of three she bought for herself and her two children.

"It's nice to have those old keepsake things from O.T.'s," she said.

For LuAnn Johnson, "The Big Store" was the starting point of her career during the Christmas season of 1969, when she was a high school student entering the work force. Today, she is working in her fifth downtown job, at Lindstrom's.

"It was a very fun experience," Johnson said of her two years of seasonal employment in the gift-wrapping department of O.T.'s. "I still like to gift- wrap. I guess it's come in handy."

She remembers wrapping everything from basic necessities to diamond rings, and that customers frequently brought in purchases from other businesses to be wrapped as well.

Former O.T. employee Mark Dennis only lasted one day in his first position at the store in 1964 - as a women's shoes salesman.

"What else ya got?" Dennis said he had asked his manager, telling him, "This is not for me."

He was subsequently transferred to the furniture and appliance department the next day, which suited him much better. He stayed for 17 years, until the closing in 1978.

"I still have people come up to me today and tell me they miss the store, and how it was a great place to shop," Dennis said. Many people tell him they still use a product he sold them 40 years ago, because the merchandise was of such high quality that they don't want to replace it.

One of his favorite memories is of the homemade pies and confections served at the restaurant inside the store, though he does not recall the name of the establishment.

Best of all, though, were the doughnuts.

"It was nothing but a gob of dough, powdered sugar and grease," Dennis said. "My God, it was wonderful."

Upon learning the building's fate Monday, Dennis said he was touched by nostalgia.

"All these wonderful pictures come to mind, and a little smile comes across your face," Dennis said. "And you get a little pensive."

Sandburg recalls

"The five long blocks of Main Street sidewalks from Seminary to the Square were crowded with people. It was a hot July afternoon in 1885. My father had been pushed and squeezed and had done some pushing and squeezing of himself till at last we stood about three or four feet from the curb in front of the O.T. Johnson dry-goods store. It was good that he had made me put on shoes and stockings, because the way I got tramped on would have been worse if I had been barefoot."

- Excerpt from pages 35 and 36 of "Prairie-Town Boy," by Carl Sandburg, describing attending a parade on Main Street at age 7, when downtown businesses closed in observance of the funeral of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Copyright 1952, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York