Confessions of a pioneer mall rat
by Jack Neely
When it opened, I was a 13-year-old with a paper route on the east side of Bearden. My route included a couple of the busiest shopping centers on Kingston Pike. I knew several of the neighborhood shopkeepers, the old ladies in the beauty parlor, the old men at the liquor stores. Their sign said "No Minors," but I never felt like a minor when I had a sack of newspapers.
I heard about this new place, out in the country, way past my paper route, even past Deane Hill Country Club, that was going to be something even more modern than Western Plaza. It was going to be a shopping center, but it was going to be inside. It was going to be like an air-conditioned town. It was going to be called West Town.
I couldn't get there on my bike, but it was soon clear that in my family I'd always find a ride. The first time I went, most of the mall wasn't open yet: there was only Miller's. It was different from either of the downtown Miller's, and its cool darkness appealed to me. It was so hip, so modern, so '70s. I bought a black AM-FM transistor radio, hardly bigger than a deck of cards, with a black leather case and a swiveling antenna and a modern 9-volt snap-in battery. I could listen to WKGN and CBS Radio Mystery Theater and the 1972 Democratic Convention at night, very quietly, when my parents couldn't know.
Then they opened up the rest of the mall. For the next four years, on rainy Saturdays when I could catch a ride, I made a habit of the place. I never heard the term "mall rat" applied to me or anybody else; there was no youth culture that I recall. I don't remember ever even seeing anybody I knew—but on a rainy weekend afternoon, wandering around West Town seemed like the main thing to do. For me, doing West Town Mall was a regular solitary exercise, like Tai Chi.
I had a circuit. First I'd stop in Record Bar and flip through LP's, working my way slowly around the room. Sometimes I'd pull one out and read the back. I usually didn't buy anything. To me, the Record Bar was something like a free art gallery, a rock 'n' roll hall of fame. Many of the recordings were by musicians that were never on the radio. I'd never heard any music by Frank Zappa or John Mayall, and I wasn't completely sure what David Bowie did for a living, but I learned to recognize them all by sight.
After an hour or two of contemplating album covers, I might stop and get a thick, salty Hot Sam pretzel or an Orange Julius (I thought Orange Julius was a trendy new hippie place; I didn't know that, decades earlier, Orange Julius sold drinks on Gay Street).
Rarely, they'd have performers in the Proffitts corner. I grew up in an old Tennessee family, but I'd never heard of cloggers until I witnessed some performing at West Town. I felt obliged to watch, because I wasn't sure who else would.
I'd walk past dozens of stores to the one place I could have found blindfolded: Hickory Farms of Ohio. There I trolled for fragrant samples, slices of summer sausage, smoked cheddar, sesame clusters. Sometimes I'd circle through two or three times until I noticed that the lady had her eye on me.
Then I'd backtrack over to Spencer's Gifts, dark, cluttered, and thick with incense, and look at the black-light posters and the risque cards. I was careful not to tell my parents I'd been in there. The cards and posters had words on them that I didn't think they'd ever heard before. It thrilled me to see them in print. I was drawn to the place but never felt quite hip enough for it, and I wondered if the other customers noticed.
Then I'd stop in Gateway Books, where I'd stand in the aisles and read the coin-collector magazines or books about my favorite wars. Once I bought a cheap volume of Poe's stories.
After Gateway, I'd drift back to J.C. Penney's and watch TV. Once, while standing in the appliances department, I watched an entire hourlong Star Trek episode, the weird one where William Windom took over the Enterprise and a giant wormlike creature nearly ate it. I slipped out, feeling as if I'd gotten away with something, shoplifted an afternoon's entertainment.
When induced, I also tried on an interminable series of pairs of slacks. I knew my way around the place, but the funny thing is, I don't remember anybody at West Town. I remember the smirky faces of the old men in the liquor stores in Bearden as if maybe they're still there; I remember the powdered ladies in the beauty parlor; I remember several of the folks on my paper route. But I don't connect a single face with the mall. It always seemed like a different person at Hot Sam, a different person at Orange Julius.
Later, somehow, we parted ways. For 20 years, I hardly visited West Town at all. But this past December I lost a bet with my daughter and ended up there one Saturday morning. I braced for it and looked at the sunny morning with regret. Inside, the place had changed a good deal. Almost all the stores were new to me. Spencer's was still there, but in a different place, not as dark, not as dense, not as subversive.
What most surprised me was in the corridors: the sunlight, the vaulted ceilings, the trees, the diversity of the people, the whole lot of lively stuff going on. I was also astonished, as I think my daughter was, too, that I saw people I knew.
Most of them assured me that they hardly ever came to the mall. But here we all were.
February 28, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 9
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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