DO YOU REMEMBR NICHOL'S & GREEN

      
At one time it was one of the best shoe stores in Marshalltown, but, today it no longer exists. It died just like a lot of other independent clothing and shoe stores in smaller communities and many larger cities too. The store sat in the middle of Main Street in between Center and First Avenue, across from the Court House on the north side.

       While attending Marshalltown Junior College, I worked there in 1963 and was the guy who picked up the shoes after they were tried on and put them back in their boxes and took them to the back room to be stored. I worked a couple of days through the week and all day on the big shopping day of Saturday.

      Bill Tank owned the store and his dad, I believe, started it years before. It was an upscale shoe store selling both women and men's shoes. Nun-Bush was a top brand of men's shoes and the best "wing tip" dress shoe with cloth bag sold for nearly $50. That was a lot of money in the early 1960's. 

       The store employed besides myself, a lady cashier up front along with at least five full time salesmen who worked primarily on commission and supported families on their income. It was not unusual on a Saturday afternoon to have the store filled with women trying on several pairs of shoes and having all the salesmen running non-stop for a period of time attempting to sell the latest style of shoe. Sometimes after the "rush" had ended it would look like a war zone!

       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 had unloaded a group of ladies and they would come storming in like there was no tomorrow. When the shopping mall was built later, it hurt the downtown shopping. Nichol's & Green had a store in the mall for a short time but didn't take. Bill sold the store to an employee Neil Curley, but, it was never the same. Times had changed. The last independent shoe store, Ewer's, went out of business uptown around 2008.