My grandmother was a loyal Sears shopper back in the day when large departments stores ruled the consumer space; she would take us every year to buy our school clothes there. My grandfather was a fan of “Craftsman” branded tools. Another famous Sears brand was “Free Spirit,” which was used on a lot of their products but was most identified with a line of bras. That blind spot was probably contributory to Sears ultimate undoing. Another loss to the world was the Sears catalog; damn, those were fun to go through. When a new one was seasonally released, Grandma was always anxious to go to the store and pick one up then we would go through it a page at a time, especially the Christmas one; she’d have us pick out what we wanted. I wanted a String-Ray bicycle.
At 11, I didn’t know that Schwinn owned the “String-Ray” brand; the Sears brand for their bike that looked similar was “Huffy.” I didn’t care, and when Santa bought me a 5-speed with a hangman’s noose sissy bar, I was elated. I would ride that bike back-and-forth in front of the little girl’s house that I had a crush on until her older sister rushed out with a bucket of water and drenched me with it. I was pretty embarrassed, so-much-so that I never had a girlfriend until I got married.
Unfortunately, my brother wanted a 3-speed regular bike. I say “unfortunately” because the brand of that bike was Free Spirit, worse, “Free Spirit” was emblazoned on the front of his bike. You can imagine how he was teased about women’s bras; he wouldn’t even ride his bike. Grandma finally took it back to Sears and got him a Huffy.
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