Under the clock

I'm going to digress a bit this fine Thanksgiving morning to say . . .
I miss Miller & Rhoads.

Like so many Richmonders of a certain age, I miss the style that Miller & Rhoads represented. I miss the carriage-trade elegance and the level of service. Most of all I miss the chocolate silk pies.

But there was another Miller & Rhoads for my family. That was the department store where my mom worked, and where I (briefly) worked. That was the Miller & Rhoads that gave me a scholarship to help pay my first semester's tuition at the University of Richmond.

I must have been about 11 when my mother decided to look for a job. It was the 1950s. We were about to move into a new and larger house, and she wanted money to furnish it. Her first thought was to learn how to type. My father bought her a second-hand Underwood typewriter and a typing stand. They cleared a corner of the dining room. My mom bought an instruction manual and set to work.

As she progressed slowly with her lessons, she heard about a sales opening at Miller & Rhoads. One morning while my sister and I were at school, she dressed up, rode the bus downtown, and applied. She got the job -- and stayed there until she retired at the age of 67.

She worked for many years selling linens in the basement. Then she moved to women's sportswear. She became a fixture over the years and developed a strong customer list. She knew what her customers wanted, and she would often call them in the morning to describe something special or something on sale. The customers would place orders, and Miller & Rhoads would deliver it to their doorsteps that afternoon.

Everybody shopped at Miller & Rhoads, and family and friends would always make it a point to spend a few minutes chatting with my mother before heading off to more shopping or to lunch in the Coffee Shop or the Tea Room. My niece Terry remembers well that she and her mother or grandmother would always make it a point to see my mom when they shopped downtown. As a result of her job at a store where everybody shopped sooner or later my mom became the most "connected" member of the family.

One of my first jobs was as a Miller & Rhoads stock clerk for the July White Sale in the better linens department up on the third floor (or maybe it was the fourth). My summer was spent keeping the shelves stocked just so. The woman who ran the department was meticulous and demanding. This was, after all, Miller & Rhoads.

My second job at Miller & Rhoads was as a part-time salesman in the men's furnishings department during my freshman year in college. On Friday nights and Saturdays, I sold ties, underwear, handkerchiefs, cuff links, sweaters and other accessories. The head saleswoman, a Mrs. Jackson, was also meticulous and demanding. Men's furnishing was on the first floor, and Mrs. Jackson was determined that it would remain a Miller & Rhoads showcase.

Because of our family's close ties to Miller & Rhoads, I thought of the store and the people my mother and I worked with almost as family. It was that kind of place.

Sadly, like so many inner-city department stores, Miller & Rhoads went out of business in 1990 after more than a century as a Richmond institution.

So many of these memories came flooding back this week when I happened across "Under the Clock: The Story of Miller & Rhoads" at the library. It's not a long book -- only 126 pages, many of which are taken up by marvelous photographs -- but it's a great story if you remember Miller & Rhoads in its heyday. It's available through History Press.

It was a kick for me to see the names of the co-authors on the cover of this gem of a book: Earle Dunford and George Bryson. Earle Dunford, the retired city editor at the Times-Dispatch, and George Bryson, who went to work at Miller & Rhoads in 1950 and made it to vice-president for public relations at the store before he "retired" in 1989.

I knew both of them. I took a class from Earle Dunford when I was at UR, where he was an adjunct instructor in journalism for 20 years. And for 16 years, I worked with George Bryson at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where he landed after the store closed. Earle Dunford taught me real-world journalism. He was a critical but excellent teacher. George Bryson was a valuable colleague at VMFA. He had known my mother for many years at Miller & Rhoads, and at least once a week he'd ask me how she was doing. When I would tell her George had asked after her, she was always so pleased that he remembered.

By the way, the recipes for two of my Miller & Rhoads favorites are in the book: for the chocolate silk pie that was sold in the bakery and for the Missouri club sandwich that was so popular in the Tea Room.