Columnist Susan Snyder: Bidding a sad adieu to Wards

Saturday, Jan. 6, 2001 | 2:58 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

When Montgomery Ward & Co. announced it was going out of business after 128 years it brought to mind one thing.

The end of an era? Recession and economic doom?

Nope.

Sale!

A big, honkin', going-out-of-business, we're-giving-away-this-stuff sale.

Now it's not like we don't appreciate all that "Monkey Wards" has done for more than a century. It's a pretty impressive history, after all.

Aaron Montgomery Ward was a young traveling salesman when he launched the nation's catalog industry in 1872, according to a historical account on the company's website. His first "catalog" was a single printed sheet offering 163 items. He also introduced the money-back guarantee, the company says.

And it was Ward's advertising man, Robert May, who gave us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. He created the character and a poem in 1939 so Ward's Santa would have something new to give to the kids. (The Rudolph song was written in 1949 by a guy named Johnny Marks and recorded by Gene Autry).

Yet when Wards officials announced they had filed for Chapter 11 protection, we didn't cry. We descended on the store like slobbering weasels in a henhouse.

The South Decatur Boulevard store's parking lot was packed in the middle of a weekday. The handicapped spaces were full, but it didn't stop an older woman who used a cane as she slowly walked across the lot to her car.

"You should have seen it this past weekend," another shopper, Carol Boehm, said as she examined a pair of black jeans. "The lines were all over the place."

Some shoppers were ruthless. They grumbled about prices that weren't as low as expected. Discounts were 20 percent, although clearance stuff was marked down another 40 percent. One customer swore the discounts were better before Christmas.

History, schmistory. Give us 70 percent off!

Soon-to-be unemployed store clerks were remarkably jovial, despite perpetually ransacked displays and heaps of clothes in the fitting rooms.

"I'm sure glad I don't work here," said a young women who eyed a mound of clothing while waiting for a dressing room vacancy.

"Everything is (stocked) according to department, but some of the departments are pretty mixed up," said a store clerk who was trying to sort and properly hang a pile of clothes.

"If the sign says '40 percent off' it might not be," she said. "Ask the sales girl first."

No personal checks. No money-back guarantees. Wonder what old Aaron M. Ward is thinking as he gazes down upon it all.

"When I heard it was closing I was just sick about it," Boehm, a Las Vegas Wards customer for 24 years, said.

"When I was a little girl back in Kansas City, Mo., my grandparents used to pick me up every Thursday and take me shopping," she said. "We'd go to Sears or to Wards."

It didn't seem the right moment to mention that just hours earlier Sears announced it would close 89 of its 860 stores. One era ending is enough.

"Now we'll have another big empty building," Boehm said. "It's kind of sad."