Wilhelm: In 1974, local businesses hosted bevy of holiday sales downtown
Fifty years ago, as Thanksgiving Day approached, the newspaper was heralding the coming of Santa Claus to downtown Fremont and holiday weekend sales.
A special section of the paper on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 1974, featured advertisements by these local merchants: Montgomery Ward, Schmidt Hat and Gift Shop, The Fashion, Fremont Toggery, Good’s Restaurant, Liberty National Bank, Jupiter, Kuebler Shoes, Pfisterer’s, Richard’s, Penney’s, Croghan Colonial Bank, Bintz’s, Meyers TV and Appliance, Weng’s Music, Lytle’s, The Gift Horse, and Lane’s Carpet and Furniture.
50 years ago merchants affected by energy crisis during holidays
The newspaper urged readers to attend the annual Christmas Parade starting at 1 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a free movie, Santa’s headquarters in the Croghan Colonial Bank parking lot and a caroling program featuring combined church choirs under the direction of Karl Kooistra in the Fremont Savings Bank parking lot at Arch and Front streets.
Joseph’s, which was something of an anchor store for the downtown on the northeast corner of Front and Garrison, was to be opened from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday and was offering 30% to 50% off of men’s suits which regularly sold from $85 to $125.
The store, proclaiming itself as one of our area’s leading citizens, offered this in a letter to readers:
“(D)uring the energy crisis we are co-operating with the government in the following ways:
“Not illuminating our outside Christmas displays.
“Limiting display windows we illuminate both in amount and time.”
Besides reducing lighting and heating inside the store, Joseph’s was also “Reducing our delivery schedule to once a week and encouraging our customers to take their packages with them.”
Downtown stores still promoted their holiday sales
Another downtown anchor, Tschumy’s, located on the southwest corner of the same intersection, was offering “The sumptuous look of leather” and inviting people to “drop in at Tschumy’s today and sit a while.” The store, which offered high quality furniture until closing in July of 1996, was at one time the oldest continuous family owned business of its kind in the state.
The downtown Montgomery Ward store also sold furniture and lots of other stuff. The store’s ad was offering a man-size leathery vinyl recliner for $88 — swivel and recliners.
Other items on sale at Ward’s ranged from a dual-action sander to a “fully automatic” corn popper. The sander could be had for $29.88 and the four-quart popper was just $9.97.
And Lords, which proclaimed that it was famous for fine fashions, had three piece “week-ender sets” including jackets, skirt and slacks in “vibrant holiday colors” for $8.99 and encouraging shoppers to “compare at $12.99.”
Out at Potter Village, Hobby Center, which encouraged potential customers that “Money is precious; use it wisely. Shop at Hobby Center.” One of its offerings was the Mattel Hairy Canary plane for $8.99. “Hand-powered plane climbs, zooms, dives, swoops, loops the loop, makes three-point landings, all indoors.” Sounds like something that a youngster had to have back in 1974.
Roy Wilhelm started a 40-year career at The News-Messenger in 1965 as a reporter. Now retired, he writes a column for both The News-Messenger and News Herald.
This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Wilhelm: 50 years ago merchants did best as energy crisis loomed
