A Ghost of Christmas Past

I had a visitation from a Christmas ghost today. It came as I drove by the striking Art Deco palace that used to house the Bullocks Wilshire department store, but now serves as the library for Southwestern Law School. The Christmas memories in part come from the fact that Bullocks Wilshire was my grandmother’s favorite store. When I was a child, she would sometimes take me in tow there on Christmas shopping expeditions or lunch outings in the famous Tea Room. But even more, my memories of the place come from having worked there summers and over Christmas break in my college years.

I was a “sales associate” in the Gift Gallery, a long, brightly lit corridor that ran along the western wing of the building, between Cosmetics and Men’s Clothing. We sold an incredible variety of beautiful things in the Gallery – objets d’art of crystal, porecelain, celadon, lacquerware and rare woods. I learned more than I wanted to on subjects I cared little about – stemware, flatware, place settings, linens. We dealt with a lot of brides-to-be and their mothers.

I would have preferred Men’s Clothing, but that was for serious sales professionals, not moonlighting college students.

Working there was not always pleasant. The carriage trade could be very demanding. Still, there was the diversion provided by the occasional celebrity sighted unaccountably far from Beverly Hills – a maturely beautiful Audrey Hepburn; a friendly and unpretentious Diana Ross, an eerily quiet and withdrawn Donald Sutherland. I remember being charmed by a vivacious and good-humored elderly woman, who handed me a charge card that read “Miss Irene Dunne.” The most boorish celebrity was Peter Pitchess, then nearing the end of his long tenure as Los Angeles County Sheriff. He was rude and loud and did not suffer gladly the measured pace of the elderly women who staffed Courtesy Wrap.

The only time I felt fear or awe, however, was due not to the way the patron acted, but who she was. One day I assisted a pleasant but very decisive matron with a purchase. I felt a brief flurry of nerves when I saw the name on the charge card she handed me – “Mrs. Norman Chandler.” Evidently, my awe derived from the sense that I was in the presence of someone truly powerful.

But Christmas was rough. Even in a hoity-toity store like Bullocks Wilshire, the crowds were heavy and constant in the Christmas season. People would pull at you all the time. More than once, I found myself pulled by different customers trying to go in different directions. The Gallery floor was hard and we were on our feet all day long. The worst part, however, was the noise. Polished floors and mirrored walls magnified the non-stop chatter. By the time I got home, I was bone-tired, pulled apart, and afflicted with a buzzing in my head that faded only slowly.

And then there were moments that make me smile even now. One day I found myself helping a tall, gorgeous brunette. She was perhaps in her late twenties and her voice had a Seven Sisters tone. She had come to the store on a Quest for the Perfect Vase. She gave “vase” a pronunciation that would have put William F. Buckley to shame: VAHHHZZZ. Even so, she had a great deal of difficulty making her choice. She also kept repeating her irritating pronunciation. A moment finally came when I couldn’t stop myself. “You don’t mind if I call it VASE, do you?” I used the standard California pronunciation, with a long “A”, “vase” as rhymed with “face.”

My patron pulled up sharply. A range of emotions played over her face. I readied myself for an explosion and wondered how hard it would be to find another job. Then she suddenly broke into a smile. A soft, almost seductive smile. She reached out and touched my arm. “Fine, so long as we understand each other,” she said, a twinkle in her eye, a hint of laughter in her voice. She made her choice shortly thereafter and the rest of the transaction was easy and friendly. She turned out to be all right, despite the Seven Sisters voice.

And she was drop-dead gorgeous. To this day, I can still remember that soft smile and her touch on my arm. I guess that makes her my Ghost of Christmas Past.

The copper-sheathed Bullocks Wilshire tower was completed in 1929 and the store reigned as a premier luxury retailer during the heyday of Los Angeles glamour. Within decades, however, the center of Southland affluence shifted well to the west, and the BW star faded. The final indignity came in 1992, when the store was looted during the rioting that followed the Rodney King verdicts. Its retail life ended shortly thereafter. It was reborn a few years later as the library for the nearby Southwestern Law School, the function it continues to serve today.