It was called Nichol's and Green Shoe Store. It was another dying breed of independently-owned retail stores around the country. The store sat on Main Street between Center and First Avenue on the north side of the street and across from the courthouse in Marshalltown, Iowa.
While attending Marshalltown Junior College as it was called then, I worked there during my sophomore year 1963. I was the guy who picked up the shoes after they were tried on and then I put them back in their boxes in the back room where they were all stored.
Bill Tank owned it when I worked there, and, his dad had started it years before. It was an upscale shoe store selling both men's and women's shoes. The best men's shoe, a Nun-Bush "wing tip," sold for $50.00. That was a lot of money for the 1960's.
The store supported five full time salesmen, a cashier, a bookkeeper, and of course a part-time guy like myself. The salesmen worked basically on commission and supported a family
It was not unusual for a Saturday afternoon to have the store filled with women trying on several pairs of shoes and having all those salesmen running non-stop for a period, attempting to sell the latest style of shoes. Then it was my job to put all those shoes back in their proper place.
It always amazed me that one minute there would be no one in the store, and then all of a sudden, it was as if a bus unloaded a group of women and they would come storming in like there was no tomorrow.
The store went out of business in the early 2000's and as of my original writing of his story, Ewer's the last independent shoe store, went out of business. This was in 2008.
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