Dayton Stories Project
Story Circle Session #031596
Rike's Employees
Clagett Residence
Dayton, Ohio
March 15, 1996
Remembering Rikes
Facilitator: Bob Barr and Marilyn Shannon Recorder and Transcriber: Lindsey Kuziensky Transcriber Typist: Sue Broadstock
Participants: Ruth Vollbrecht, John Vollbrecht, Naomi Clagett, Gilbert McDaniel, Ruth Wilson, Elizabeth Rohler
This session lasts approximately 1 hour 24 minutes.
Due to its length the interview has been split into two parts.
PART ONE
PART TWO
Bob Barr
I was going to talk just a little bit here about Meredith's father. What do you remember most about the traffic—when stuff came into the store? Remember the packages that used to come in? What was the first thing that they used to do to those packages?
Gilbert McDaniel
They checked them into receiving.
Bob Barr
That's right and what was the receiving slip like? There was a four part form. What did they call those? They were called key-req forms. Remember those? Her daddy was the inventor of those forms and over the course of the years he merchandised those forms to every department store in the country about using key-req forms. That was Jack Moss who had one of the most imaginative minds of any human being that I ever mentioned.
John Vollbrecht
I started at Rike's the seventy-fifth anniversary and I was cooping at Stivers High School. I remember the seventy-fifth year because on the mezzaine they had a candle—the mezzaine right off the main floor—and that candle was supposed to burn for seventy- five years and, I guess, it probably did but they didn't keep it at the store. But the base of the candle could have been easily this large (about two arm lengths), then it sort of tapered up.
Bob Barr
Was it a lighted flame?
John Vollbrecht
Lighted flame. How could it burn seventy-five years if it wasn't lit?
Bob Barr
Do you have another favorite story you'd like to share?
John Vollbrecht
Yes, that one about that binocular. I won't.
Ruth Vollbrecht
I didn't work there very long, but I came to the store in '37 and that was kind of an interesting time, just before World War II and I have several memories of that time. One of them is, I'm sure you all remember Elmer Webster. Well, when I was on the main floor and they had bargain squares down the main aisle and once a year they had a sachet promotion—it was called "Geisha Girl." Do you remember that Naomi? Remember Elmer dressed up as a geisha girl out there in the aisle? I will never forget it because he was so funny and the whole store smelled like this stuff. But he was wonderful. I don't know whether it was the spring or the fall. Do you remember that Ruthie? Well, you weren't on the main floor then.
Ruth Wilson
No. I came in '39.
Ruth Vollbrecht
I was there until '42, so it was sometime during that time, but they had every year, Elmer out there. He was pretty wonderful.
Bob Barr
What were they trying to sell?
Ruth Vollbrecht
A sachet. Smelled up the whole main floor. I remember, I think probably in about the first year of the war, movie stars would come through and they always came to Rike's and go up to the dining room and the jewelry department was right next to the handbag department and it was sort of on the main route from the side door over to the elevator, so they usually came down that aisle. So, you know, everybody would get all excited and one day some female star came through, and I don't remember who it was, but the jewelry girls didn't tell us. We were so incensed we decided to get even with them. So, I don't know, it must have been about the next week and we acted like we were all excited, "Oh, did you see him? Did you see him?" And we told them that Clark Gable had come through and the jewelry department was practically deserted because they all ran up to the dining room to see Clark Gable and we felt we really got even with them that time.
Elizabeth Rohler
I started at Rike's about '30, let's see, I was there thirty years and started when my youngest daughter started school and I started on the main floor in the men's department and I lasted about through Christmas holidays. When I went into the store I wasn't even thinking about joining the store. Wasn't even thinking about becoming a regular, so I was an extra for about ten years and then I became a regular for about twenty years and I can remember when I asked to go down in the basement, first place they put me was in Bob Barr's section and we had a lot of fun with the hoisery and everything. It was proportioned hose and we had big sales. We'd send cards out and people would call in for their sizes.
Bob Barr
You just didn't buy them by the size of your foot. How did you buy them?
Elizabeth Rohler
They were proportioned.
Bob Barr
What did they call them? If you were short and slender, what did they call them?
Elizabeth Rohler
Well, "pert" was for the small people and medium-slender was "tempo" and "mode" was model and "grando" was for tall, big people. Well, when we'd have sales, Robert he used to like to come down and help me sell them and I always told the ladies—I had to tell the ladies to step back so I could see their legs—and he was right there on the ball and I'd tell him to lift up their skirt or their dress and boy, Bob's eyes just bulged. Not only that, but everytime he'd buy a new pair of shoes, he would take off his old shoes and put them in my section on the shelves where the hose was supposed to go. So, when they got up to three pair—you know how we used to send things out on "double O"? Customer's own merchandise. Well, I got tired of those shoes hanging around there, so I put them in a brown bag and stapled it shut and I sent them home to Barbara, his wife and she said, "No wonder he couldn't find his shoes!"
Ruth Wilson
I was gift buyer. I was there for thirty-five years and I think I made twenty-five trips to Europe for the store during that time. I want to tell a couple stories that go back before our time that I heard from one of my sales people, Sarah Welsh, who started there before Rike's was at Second and Main. She was sixteen or fifteen when she started to work there and she told how when they were moving from Fourth and Main where the Reibold Building is, that the sales people had to help pack up everything to move. Things were put onto wagons and they rode up Main Street and everybody in town gathered there as if it were a parade to watch Rike's move and that would have been about six months or a year before the flood. Also, the woman for whom she worked was the needlework buyer and she started to carry gift items and she became the first gift department buyer in the country. She started gift departments and she even traveled to the Orient. Now that would have been back in the very early 1900s. When anything new came in that she thought was interesting—at that time there were all the big old homes downtown—she would pack up a basket with these beautiful items in it and she'd send a salesperson out to Mrs. Jones or to Mrs. Smith or whichever one she thought and the girl would take it around and show it to maybe a half a dozen different houses and sell merchandise that way. I always thought that was the forerunner of customer service.
But I was involved, as Bob said, so much with the foreign bazaar and the getting of craftsmen and one of the things that I remember that really upset the downtown. We had two Japanese men come in who were going to do floral arrangements and we had them housed in the Miami Hotel next door. Well, they had some sort of an herb—a leaf—that they put on the back of their hand at a certain point and would light it and that would burn down and would hit a nerve there and this was supposed to relax them and they had told us they were going to be doing this. Well, of course, lighting something like that is a hazard. So the hotel was notified and the fire department was notified and the hotel arranged for something that they could put along the bottom of the door so that nothing could go out, but unfortunately it did and all the fire departments in town showed up. They had to empty the hotel simply because smoke was pouring out of that one room and, of course, there was no fire. There were a lot of strange things that happened with the craftsmen being here. One time there was a little girl here from Switzerland—a young girl—that lived way up in the Alps and had a ceramic factory and it was a very nice small factory. So she was one of our craftsmen craftswomen—and she was very homesick when she was here. So every night I took her home with me and fed her and she'd sit on the floor and put her head in my lap. She just couldn't wait to get back home.
John Vollbrecht
Remember the big, hefty woman that was a buyer?
Ruth Wilson
Of the gifts? That's the one that started it. Mrs. Heyduk.
John Vollbrecht
She used to take two, almost theatrical size, trunks with her when she went to Europe, which was a lot of luggage.
Ruth Wilson
And they said she could swear like a trooper.
John Vollbrecht
You could hear her across the floor.
Ruth Wilson
They were scared to death of her, but yet they liked her. They respected her. Sarah used to hide in those great big drawers when she'd get into trouble—had done something that Mrs. Heller didn't like. She'd pull open a drawer and get in and somebody would push it closed. I think] have a picture here of those fixtures with those great big drawers.
Gilbert McDaniel
I started at Rike's in 1939 and what impressed me then—I thought it was a big deal—I started out at $13.50 a week and I thought that was a fabulous salary, in the Traffic Department.
Ruth Wilson
He got fifty cents more a week than I did. I started at $13.00 in 1939.
John Vollbrecht
He got a dollar and a half more than I did.
Gilbert McDaniel
I was with Dick Rupp in reserved stockroom and it was a real enjoyable place, but I think the thing that most impressed me was the daily tours of old Fred Rike coming around and he would say, "Good morning," to the people. He'd start on the eighth floor in the traffic department where I was and, I don't know why, but wherever I was, he'd almost come and find me and say, "Good morning and how are you today?" And he'd know you by name. He'd ask your name the first time and then the second time when he'd come around he'd say, "How are you, Gilbert? It's a nice day isn't it?" And he'd start through to the Traffic Department and he'd work all the way down through the store and he'd make it a point to go all the way to the basement and say, "Good morning," to the people. And then Dave Rike, he picked it up and he done it for a while, but I think the store got so big and so many employees that eventually it kind of died out.
Another thing that impressed me when I was president of the Twenty-Year Club in 1970, I wanted to get a little history of Rike's and I knew it was going to be a big job, but I started on it immediately after I was nominated as president of making a giant scrapbook of the history of Rike's and particulary the RK News and I knew that the history was in the old RK News. So, I started compiling the scrapbook and it was very small then. I think in 1970, it started out about twenty-five pounds and now the scrapbook is up to close to ninety pounds and it's almost too difficult to get it around, but over the years I've added to it and then I've completely carried it on until the closing of Rike's. Also, people have donated material to me and I've added it to it and I'm almost running out of pages. I think I got fifteen pages left and it's almost a full-sized newspaper sheet of each page in the scrapbook and it's quite a history of Rike's and one of these days, people are going to look back and reminisce and remember the old Rike's.
Another thing that brings back a memory to me, in 1970 the retirees was never invited to the Twenty Year Club banquets. After you retired, you weren't invited and I'll remember that year because I talked to our president, Joe Brooks, and I said to him, "You know we never invited the retirees. It's always the current employees that's coming to the Twenty Year Club banquet in the fifth floor dining room. Wouldn't it be great if we could have the retirees come to the banquet, too?" And he said, "Well, why don't they? Get ahold of Kay Bond and bring her down to my office and we'll talk about it and see how many people are involved." So he had Kay Bond research and get a little history of how many retirees there were on our books. He got the figure and it was going to increase our Twenty Year Club banquet about two hundred more people. And he said, "Well, we can't get that many people in the dining room. Gilbert, where would a good place to have a banquet that we could get all of our retirees and all of our current Twenty Year Club members at one big party?" So we started investigating around and we decided on the ballroom of the Dayton Biltmore Hotel. He said, "Fine. Let's have it at the Biltmore Hotel." That's the first time in the history of Rike's that we ever had the Twenty Year Club banquet outside the store. It was at the Biltmore Hotel. So we had the big ballroom and we set up on the outside and I thought it would be nice—our theme that we decided on was "Remember When." We had a "Remember When" theater, we had a bar, we had a honky-tonk piano player—it was Chloe who was working in our cafeteria—and we also had a "Remember When" theater and I just told Bob, today, I dug up some of that old material. I have all the slides and at that time when we compiled that "Remember When" theater, we decided we wanted to go way back in the history of Dayton and I think we have pictures of the old history of Dayton in it from Mayfield Photo. I worked with Mayfield Photo, I can't remember the gentleman's name out there, but almost six months and we compiled coming up the history of Dayton—Rike's, the flood, fires. That's all in the slides. There's eighty slides and also, what we did so that we didn't have to have somebody that's in the retirees running the theatre, Jake Shope who's our maintenance man was very good with tape recorders and that. So, I asked the gentleman out at Mayfield Photos, "How could we synchronize this so that we'd have the tapes running plus the projector and sound and everything in the theatre and nobody would have to run it?" He said, "Kodak has a simonizing that you can synchronize with the slides and the tape and then you put pauses on the tape and it would also change the slides." So we have that tape and we're now trying to find a tape recorder so at our next reunion we can have these slides and play it at Rike's reunion. So what I did, I narrated all the pictures onto the tape. Jake Shope sat down and we narrated everything onto the tape about the pictures and the employees. It's quite a history of Rike's.
John Vollbrecht
Speaking about the flood, I lived down on Vine Street about six blocks south of downtown and the NCR boats came around and Grandma lived four doors from us and she was at our house, I don't know what for, but when the boat came to the second floor window, Mom got out and got in the boat and got me in the boat and you know, they wouldn't take Grandma because she wanted to take her canary. She had a canary in the cage and she wouldn't get in the boat unless they took her canary and after some argument, they got the canary in. She got on the streetcar on Wyoming Street or something and went way out on Xenia Avenue to her daughter.
Naomi Clagett
I went to work there in 1938 and I worked there until 1972 and I went in as Fall Festival—just to make some extra money for the holidays—and never left. Ruth Kirschner was my assistant buyer. I sold hosiery, sold anklets and nylons came in at that time and, of course, they were rationed. Ms. Rogers decided that I would make a good adjuster, but I had to have training and we had Margaret McNary and I know you all remember Margaret McNary. So they sent me up to her so she could give me training on how to make adjustments in hosiery. Everybody that came in got two pair of hose. Any kind. I don't care what they were. They just took two pair of hose. Then my job was to exchange them for their size or their color, whatever they wanted. I was to make the adjustment and make them happy by not giving them what they wanted. Margaret McNary took me up in her office. I had two or three sessions with her. But one story that she told has stuck in my mind because everybody was scared to death of her. And she said, "Young lady, I want to tell you a story. There was a young couple came into the store and they had several children. They closed their account. I took it upon myself to go out to their home to find out why they closed their account and I got out there and was sitting in the living room and here was these three little kids." Margaret McNary had never married. She was never around children. These people had three little children, they grabbed her purse, dumped everything out of it into the cushions of the davenport and she said, "I sat there and took that, but young lady I'll tell you when I left there I had their account." She impressed me so much and think she's the one that taught me how to make adjustments really and how to do it with a smile and not give them a thing they want but they think they're getting exactly what they want and that was excellent training. She was wonderful.
I also made eleven trips to Europe. I bought gloves, belts, handkerchiefs, sunglasses. Anything little tiny they didn't know who to give it to, they gave it to me. It was very interesting and thought I had a wonderful career and loved to work there. There's so many things, so many stories about the service of the store that I remember. When I first went there, it was a small store, there were only seven floors and Mr. Rike, when there were customers in the store, they wouldn't ring the bell. The store closed at five thirty, but everybody had to stay until that last customer was waited on in the store, at Christmastime particularly and they never left the store until that customer was waited on. Another thing I remember, of course the hosiery department was right next to the baked goods. Twenty minutes after five they reduced the baked goods because they didn't want any left over and you never seen such a mob in your life. Go over there and buy pies for nineteen cents.
Elizabeth Rohler
Remember when we had to work New Year's Eve and how we set all the clocks when it come time to leave and all the clocks went at the same time.
Naomi Clagett
We did that every Christmas time. Mrs. Fred Rike, after Mr. Fred Rike passed away, she used to come in the day before Christmas. It was Christmas Eve and my glove department was right next to the clock department. They used to wind all the clocks and then she'd come down to be there and then the carolers used to come down the escalators and sing Christmas carols and she'd sit in her wheel chair in my department and all these carolers came down and sang Happy Birthday and then all the clocks would go off exactly at five thirty.
John Vollbrecht
Going to work one morning I had an accident. Guess who the driver of the other car was? Your husband. I was on the outside lane, he was on the inside and he pulled out and hit me and he was taking Mrs. Hasrow to the store. He said it was my fault. I said it was his.
Naomi Clagett
My husband was Elmer Clagett and he was with the Rike family for twenty-three years. He drove the Rike family and was with Mr. Fred Rike and would take him on trips. They'd go almost all over the world. I know more about the Rike family because he used to come home and tell me and it was a wonderful, wonderful family. He was wonderful to work for and Elmer was part of that family.
Ruth Wilson
One of the things that I remember is that the Rike family, the older family and the others were grown, of course, but they weren't the ones in charge, they would gather in the evening for dinner and they'd discuss different employees who were in trouble or had a financial problem or something. They cared about their people enough to know what was happening and then they would try and do something about it. They did a lot of things. One of the other things, too, do you remember in the dining room, everybody wore gloves and wore hats and even the buyers? If they went up there they had to wear a hat when they went there for lunch. They weren't allowed to go in without it.
Bob Barr
One of the highlights of all our experiences, there were two things I'd like to throw out for common discussion, one is Christmases. I can remember those big parades after Christmas. Some of us got a little more wild than others. Down in Rike's basement there used to be the den of iniquity down there. You guys in the upstairs would never come down to Rike's basement at Christmas time because Tommy Johnson used to always have a bottle of scotch and he was a shoe buyer. Remember Enagentic Shoes? If you looked under 9D that's where he kept the scotch bottle. We always had to work with no time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas. You never had any time off at all and if we did all that we got what we called the long weekend. We could take a Thursday, Friday and a Saturday off because all we got was a half day off a week. Christmas was such a high intensive thing and gee whiz you worked so hard and then that Christmas Eve, like Naomi was telling us here, I can remember there was a lady named Paige Goodman. I doubt anybody in this room remembers Paige Goodman. She always found out where Tommy Johnson had the bottle and unfortunately some people abused that a little bit. They used to have these wheelchairs with the big wicker backs and I remember one Christmas we decorated that wheelchair and put Paige Goodman in there—decorated with toilet paper and stuff—and wheeled it all the around the floor. We ran into Mr. Rike and that was about my last experience down there. Let's talk just a little bit about Christmas.
John Vollbrecht
When I'd come home, I was in the Navy, I'd always run up and see Fred Rike because Dave was in the service and we'd talk there for a while and I'd get ready to leave, he'd say, "John, you need any money?" "No, Mr. Rike." Sometimes I wish I had.
Ruth Vollbrecht
You were in the Christmas parades.
John Vollbrecht
I was in all of them but one. I overslept one morning. I was the hero of the parade, not Santa Claus. Remember the real good looking guy in the funny papers? He was a hero of all this stuff. Blonde fellow. I can't think of his name.
Ruth Vollbrecht
And that was you in the parade.
John Vollbrecht
I was in one year and then the next year I overslept.
Naomi Clagett
Those parades were wonderful. I was one of the kids in the old woman in the old woman in the shoe.
John Vollbrecht
In the parade, I learned the first year, some of those parades were cold. It was bitter cold. I know one girl, cute little girl, lost her job because she was hitting somebody else's bottle and she got looped. But I always, after the first parade, asked for a big head. Those paper mache things. It was warm under there. Sometimes I'd be running around and you would be perspiring and I'd run around and I'd give the policeman a boot with my foot and the kids loved that.
Bob Barr
I remember those parades. I was Pinocchio one year. I remember that so distinctly. They used to go from the Fairgrounds clear down to Rike's and then the big event was that Santa Claus used to get off of the float and go down the chimney over at the annex at Rike's.
Ruth Wilson
As soon as one parade was over Display started immediately the next week planning for the following year.
Ruth Vollbrecht
Remember the reindeer going up the side of the building and they had eight and then they added two more and a couple more.
Ruth Wilson
And then the animated window. Someone has it.
Ruth Vollbrecht
They were wonderful windows.
Ruth Wilson
The thing I remember most about Christmas, we had the Christmas Shop and you talk about celebrating on Christmas Eve, we had to stay—this was before all the computers and mechanization—we had to stay on Christmas Eve and inventory that whole Christmas Shop before we could go home. We'd usually work until around eight-thirty. It would take us that long to do it. It was the only way they had a control for fifty percent off the next day. That was before you had the new registers. Now it would be really easy to do it.
Gilbert McDaniel
I can remember always on Christmas Eve they'd designate certain people at the store to stay and we'd stay until midnight in case a customer wanted something or they wanted to exchange something or something was damaged or broken that they could come back in the store and exchange it so they'd have a nice Christmas.
Bob Barr
That's a good memory. My dad was in the television department. I remember many, many times on Christmas Eve our families would be disrupted because somebody hadn't gotten their delivery or their television set. You delivered it to their house on Christmas Eve. Those little fine things that made it.
Ruth Wilson
Years ago they used to deliver a spool of thread even.
Bob Barr
Do you have any memories of customers? We've all talked a little bit about the closeness of the Rike's personnel and the customers.
Naomi Clagett
It was Mrs. Jackson. Of course, she was so arthritic her husband would bring her down in the morning and she'd be there for the day and she'd always come to my department because we had stools. My girls would take her to the ladies room and somebody would come down and she'd go up and buy and she was a terrific customer. Go up to the morning room and they would sell her clothes then somebody would take her to lunch, but she always ended up down in my department and she'd be there from early in the morning until late in the afternoon. Her husband would bring her in and we baby-sat her.
Bob Barr
Why did you have stools?
Naomi Clagett
Well, you used to fit people. They come in and put there arm down and you'd fit the glove in. Remember Emma?
Ruth Vollbrecht
I can remember Emma. She was also one who was with the store before they moved up to Second Street and she used to tell about it and I can remember Emma so well and she always wore high collars to hold her chin up, I guess and curls on top of her head, but the thing about her fitting gloves—and she was a wonderful salesperson and she knew everything about gloves and she was wonderful with the customers. What they didn't see was what went on otherwise because they'd sit there with their hand like this and she'd be standing—of course they were sitting—and she'd be fitting these wonderful sixteen button kid gloves on and while she was doing it she was making the most outrageous faces across the aisle to where the rest of us were watching her. She was hysterical and then she'd mouth all these things about these customers and then she'd just be so sweet to them and they loved her and she could sell anything, couldn't she?
Naomi Clagett
She retired I think when she was in her eighties. But she retired and the last few years were awfully difficult for her and she'd come in and work from eleven to two—right through the lunch hours—and she'd produce as much as any other sales person.
Ruth Vollbrecht
When I became buyer of the glove department, so many people would say, "Oh, you're going to have to trouble with that Emma. She's been there forever." And I was just a young thing that didn't know from anything, but the thing was that she was so helpful to me I think probably because I knew she knew everything and I didn't and she taught me so much. I never had a speck of trouble working with her. Did you?
Naomi Clagett
No. What I did with her, she would get on the other girls. She elbowed them. She wanted to get to that customer the first and another would start and she'd give them the elbow and so they'd walk away and she'd take the customer. That was her method of doing it.
Ruth Vollbrecht
I happened to remember one time, back in those days the girls also worked on commission and I remember one time Emma went up to get her commission check and she came down and she was absolutely livid because she got one nickel.
Ruth Wilson
Well, you had quotas and your commission was over that.
Naomi Clagett
She was really a terrific salesperson. How I handled her when I'd get a new girl I'd say, "Now Emma, you know so much about gloves. How about you taking her under your wing and showing her how to do everything?" She just ate it up.
Bob Barr
You don't see gloves as much as they were as in the days when you were the glove buyer, how many sales people would you have during a busy season?
Naomi Clagett
At Christmas time I'd have thirty-five. That's the cover the various hours and days. Through the week some of them would work three days a week, some of them four and I had them all out to my house for Christmas dinner. I entertained them all at my house—thirty-five of them.
Bob Barr
Ruth Wilson, your department was big up there, too.
Ruth Wilson
Even in poor times we had a minimum of nine people full time, aside from your extras and then at Christmas time, just in the gift department, not the Christmas shop, but just the gift department, we'd have about thirty-one and then we'd have, maybe, thirty- five running the Christmas shop and then when you added the branches and had them coming in every four hours—this was the hard part—trying to get information to them. If you had an ad in the paper, you can post an ad and have a note on a bulletin board but you can't make them go look at it and you had people coming in every four hours and then a customer comes in and wants to know about something. That salesperson hasn't bothered to look at the ad or anything, you can't possibly have a meeting with each one of them. There's no way you could. I think that was the beginning of the downfall of service to customers and I don't mean only in Rike's but everyplace when they started going to short hours. Of course, it was of advantage to them.
I have some things that were amusing about customers who were shoplifters. We had one woman that came in one time and we had posts that had these square counters around them. She had a shopping bag and we had the Lenox accessories—the ashtrays, the bowls and the vases—and she simply took her hand and swooshed them into the bag and you could hear them clank, clank. Now, some of the customers, we knew who they were always to watch, but some of them we had arrangements with their families, too. One time a woman came in, she was a doctor's wife, and we had a square clock that was a thick rope of crystal and it sat on an easel and she picked it up and was looking at it and kind of put it up in her arms and Sarah Welsh, who'd been there for umpteen years, was waiting on her and she said, "Oh, Mrs. So and So, are you interested in that?" "Oh, I'm not sure that I would." And she'd wander around and she always had that in her hand. Well, she walked out of the store with it, but she didn't have the easel. So Sarah put the easel in a drawer and a few days later the woman came back and was looking all around and Sarah went up to her, "Oh, Mrs. So and So, are you looking for something? Can I help you?" And then one time—of course they took accessories from our department and put it in the furniture department and we had a crystal bowl that was about twenty inches in diameter, but it wasn't very deep. It was like a fishbowl but maybe eight inches deep and it disappeared. Later on they found out—they picked up a shoplifter—and they found out it was a man that had taken it and he put it into his briefcase—he must have had a huge briefcase. It turned out he was a minister out at the Theological Seminary. As I say, we always knew who a lot of them were and we'd always send for the Security to come watch them, but we did also have arrangements with families sometimes to charge the merchandise to them.
Bob Barr
What was the signal for Security? You could hear it with the bells. Don't you remember that? Three bells. Bang-bang-bang. That meant they wanted security. We used to have the perverts, too. We had these guys that liked to look up women's dresses. Remember? The most classic one that I remember, this man must have been perverted and remember the umbrella boxes? He had like an umbrella box and it was rigged up like a periscope. He'd come to the counter and kind of sidle up to some lady and he'd been set looking down there and I think it was George Coe. Remember George Coe? George Coe was about the biggest trickster we ever had at that thing. He named that thing—I'm not going to say what it is in mixed company. But I think people were more characters then. Do you remember any other characters? Remember Shorty outside?
Gilbert McDaniel
I've got pictures of him. He had a newsstand right outside on the corner of Rike's. Rike's built it. He had his original one and then Rike's built one an exact copy of theirs. It was a marquee and everything.
Bob Barr
Remember what the sign said across that building? "We occupy the whole building."
(End of Side A)
John Vollbrecht
Every Christmas, you know, the company sent little gifts. We got billfolds and then the last year I was out there everybody—I shouldn't say "everybody"—I got a fruitcake and it was a good one—lots of them were horrible—and there's this saying on our ship that Christmas that the Pacific Ocean is full of Japs, ships and fruitcakes.
Bob Barr
The store sent you out a fruitcake?
Gilbert McDaniel
Yes, they sent them. They sent billfolds and we got a gift for Christmas.
Bob Barr
Everybody got a gift during the war?
Gilbert McDaniel
Yes, they sent gifts to the employees that was in the service.
John Vollbrecht
That was sunken Jap ships.
Bob Barr
What do you remember about the war? How many of you were there during the war time? I can remember cigarettes. The cigarettes were rationed—I was in high school then—I was not very old—and they used to send me down to Keelson's tobacco store to pick up cigarettes and I'd come back from Keelson's with a big box of cartons of cigarettes and people knew—they wanted cigarettes so badly—they knew when Rike's was sending a kid over there to pick up the cigarettes and by the time I came back from Keelson's I'd have five or six people following me down the street knowing that those cigarettes are going to be on sale at Rike's pretty quickly. It was the same way with nylon stockings. Ruth Rogers was the most prominent hosiery buyer—I was in the basement so I never got prominent in ladies’ hosiery—but she talked about the rationing that they had of nylon stockings. When they first came out they rationed them. You only got two pair of nylons.
Gilbert McDaniel
I got a real human interest story at Christmas time. I always enjoyed the Santa Land and Toyland and the Tyke's Shop because I was involved in all the set-ups on all those and I used to do part-time Santa work because I liked it and I'd go down and Bill Keller, who was Rike's Santa then, he was real nice and Blinko the Clown was there and I always wanted to learn make-up. So on my lunch hour, I'd finish my lunch and go down with Bill Keller and Blinko the Clown and they'd teach me how to put make-up on because he said it was an art. He said, "If you don't know how to do it—that's why a lot of these guys look like tramps as Santa." Doing that I got acquainted pretty closely with Joe Keller and Blinko and one Christmas I was down there and a gentleman came in to the lady in charge of the Santas where Santa photo was and we had maybe six or eight Santas there and he said, "I'd like to hire a Santa for a special job." And the lady said, "Well, let me check." So she checked with the Santas there and everybody was either tied up on a party at night or they couldn't go. So she knew that I did Santa work part-time so she came to me and she said, "Gilbert, could you do a job for this man?" And I said, "Well, I don't have an outfit. Most of mine, I rent them." And she said, "Well, you can borrow one of our Santa suits here and go do whatever you need to do for the gentlemen." He was president of Genuine Auto Parts and so I called him up and he said, "I have a son that's in the hospital and he's deathly ill, in fact the priest is going to the hospital tonight to give him last rites, but the only thing he wants to see is his Ho-ho, his Santa. Would you mind going out to the hospital and seeing him?" And I said, "No, not at all." I always had little gifts for the parties I did, so I wrapped up a bunch of little gifts and got the Santa suit and went out to the hospital and the little boy was in there and the priest was there and the family was there and the little kid, he was just overjoyed, the best they had ever seen him when I walked in. I gave him little gifts and talked to him. It was about three weeks later the lady in Santa Land that was in charge of Santas, she called me and she said, "You know the gentlemen you went out to the hospital and saw his little boy? He said he's on the road to recovery." In fact, ever since then I did parties at his home and his son had grown up and has children and I'm doing his parties.
Ruth Vollbrecht
I just want to interject that all the time our kids were little there was the same Santa at Rike's. The kids had their picture taken with him year after year and they thought that that was Santa—the other guys, they were helping him out—but he was the real Santa and I have these series of pictures of the kids with the same one. He was a wonderful Santa Claus and the Tyke Shop was nice, too, for the kids.
Ruth Wilson
I'd like to go back to this war subject. This is an after war story. The first year I went to Europe was in the early 1950s and of course they were still under rationing for food and everything. We had to take nylon stockings along and hand them out to the girls in the offices. But one of the things, and I think this shows the compassion of Rike's, each one of us that went the first few years was taken up to the office and Mr. Starling talked to us and told us that every day we had to eat a big meal at noon because that would encourage our interpreters to eat a big one and we were paying for their meals and then that way at night when they went home they would eat a little less and that would be more for their family and particularly this was true in Italy. They were having a very hard time even managing food for themselves at that time. But I often thought that was really thinking through in a compassionate way for other people.
Bob Barr
I think that's the magic world for me in all of conservations is compassion and love of people, but they could be tough, too. I remember at the end of the year when they reviewed your departments. It was almost like the day of judgment in heaven. Scared to death. Mr. Rike would sit in the middle and Mr. Everhard at his right hand, Mr. Starling on his left hand and you walked up there. It was about as close to a judgment day as you ever had. You walk in there with your operating statement and I never will forget Starling one time told me, "Well, Bob you're on the right track, but we don't like to pay you until you get in the station." And then he gave me a seven dollar and a half raise. They were tough people They were merchants in the finest sense of the word. They were tough from time to time.
Ruth Wilson
I think people listening to us would have thought we had fun all the time, but it wasn't an easy kind of a business to be in, it's just that our surroundings and our background helped offset some of the tough times.
Bob Barr
It was tough times, too. I think you're right, Ruth, I think each of us had difficult times at Rike's. Liz Rohler, you stood underneath the escalator for how many years?
Elizabeth Rohler
At least ten. It was under the escalator. That was such a small place, too and I just would walk back and forth like a caged lion until Bob got a chair for me and they handed me a book and he said, "Now, when you're not busy you can read this, but when a customer comes up, I want you right there." I sold hosiery. I sold gloves. We had gloves in the basement and I sold gloves down in the basement, too.
Bob Barr
The basement was the second biggest store in town.
Ruth Wilson
Also being tough, we didn't have the computers and things that are available today. We didn't even have an adding machine and all those figures. You had to make your six month budget and we had three offices in a row—there was Johnny's and one other and mine in one row—and mine happened to be a little bit bigger than the others and over in the merchandise office they were going to get a new adding machine, so I went over and I said, "Can we have that adding machine?" And so they brought it over and they put it in my office because there was a little more space in there and everybody had to come use that. We had no other way other than figuring in your head or counting on your fingers and your toes.
Bob Barr
Remember the stubs?
Naomi Clagett
Stubs was on the part you teared off of your merchandise when it was sold and they had to be counted and entered into a stock book every day. Not only that, but they also had requests things with what a customer wanted that you had calls for but you didn't have in stock and boy, if they didn't have it, you better get it.
Bob Barr
You'd have great big sacks of stubs of every pair of gloves you sold or every shirt you sold. You had a stub you had to tear off and then at the end of the day you had to count those dern things.
Naomi Clagett
By manufacturer, by style number, by price.
John Vollbrecht
I went to Europe, too. Three times, but I was the first to go behind the Iron Curtain— Warsaw.
Naomi Clagett
I went to Vienna.
John Vollbrecht
Warsaw was coming to the foray in luggage. I bought silverware and one time china. I wanted to get out there. I was running late and I left my hat there. Guess it's still there.
Ruth Wilson
There again, war time—or after war—the first trip I took I went into Vienna and a buyer from California went at the same time I did. Now we all travelled in a group at that time but I would have to shoot off different places, so the two of us went alone and we landed in Vienna at the British war base and we could not have anybody meet us because there might be an incident on the road. So we had to come in on a British Air bus with British soldiers sitting there with tommy guns because they didn't know what we happen because at that time there was the tri-rule and Russia happened to be the rulers at that time and it was sleeting and it was cold and we got in the hotel—it was so miserable feeling. It was a beautiful old hotel and they were trying to redo it but didn't have much money and we ended up on two different floors and mine was the redone one and it was an old, old one and the other woman had the old style. But we went down for dinner and we ordered fish—it was about the only thing available—and they brought it in a great big copper fish kettle cold as it could be and we were so frozen. It was cold outside and no heat inside, so we decided we'd ask for a hot water bottle when we went up. Well, I called for my room steward and that one didn't understand English. Finally got hold of one and I made him understand that yes, I wanted a hot water bottle and he went off and he came back a little later. He said, "I'm sorry the other lady upstairs got the hot water bottle."
Bob Barr
You remember all the buying trips we used to have to take on the railroad trains. We always had roomettes we stayed in which were very unusual. Remember how the roomettes were laid out? You sat in there and if you wanted to go to bed you had to pull the drape down and back out into the aisle and drop your bed down and then climb back in there and get into the thing and the problem was that they had the sink that you could wash in and the commode right there so that when you put the bed down that wiped that all out. So in the middle of the night if you had to go the bathroom you had to go out and pull that damn drape down and walk back in. But then you always had that little compartment. You remember that little compartment right above the bed that went out into the aisle? What did you put in there? You put your shoes up there. The porter used to open up on the other side and he would shine your shoes and then when you got done, you'd wake up with your shoes. Well, we had a very much of a character down in Rike's basement by the name of Arden. Remember Arden? She was a very astute person and she bought infants and stuff—very knowledgeable—but for years and years—and this is the honest truth—she thought that little box was to put your corset in. Could you imagine the look on that porter's face when he opened up that thing? How did you know when to get up in the morning when you were taking the New York Central Train to New York? You never said, "I want to get up at seven o'clock or six o'clock." You'd say, "I want to get up at West Point." You'd want to get up at a special geographic location because the trains were often late. If you said, "Six o'clock," or "Seven o'clock," you might not get into Grand Central Station until ten o'clock so you always said you wanted to get up at a certain geographic location.
Ruth Wilson
I was going to tell one funny thing. Going back to the Foreign Bazaar—I'm sure whether it's a way to get customers to buy or to chase them away—we carried old pistols, particularly dueling pistols. One time we were getting ready for the Foreign Bazaar and I was up on a step ladder getting ready to hang them up on a wall and a male customer came along and asked me a question and I turned around and I had this pair of pistols in my hands. He said, "Hey lady, I'm just asking you a question! Don't shoot me!"
Bob Barr
It's been a wonderful, wonderful experience. I just want to tell one more story that maybe it will trigger somebody, but you know when black persons came into the store to buy to stockings- I can only speak of stockings, now—we had preconceived ideas of what they wanted and a lot of times we weren't sensitive to other people, but if Ruth Wilson or Naomi came into buy stockings I would say, "Would you like Caprice," which was grey, "or would you like Suntan?" Or you know all the colors, Liz. Whatever color you wanted. But if a black person came to our counter and wanted a pair of stockings, you 'never asked what color it was. You'd reach back in that counter and automatically pull out a color. You know what that color was? Red Fox. Red Fox was the color that black persons wore for their stockings and I thought, "How many people accidentally put down, without knowing it, just by preconceived ideas that just because you're black we're going to pull out this Red Fox?" I use that story an awful lot because I think that even though we were sensitive to a lot of things in our experiences down there, there were times when we perhaps weren't as sensitive as we should be.
The basement picnics, some of those guys used to build up for the basement picnic all year long and I guess we used to have little games. I think the game I most remember and you'll remember this I think, we got two bed sheets and sewed them together so you had a great big long thing like this and we'd cut holes in them and put numbers and as part of our entertainment at the basement picnic, we got Liz and all the rest of the ladies to put there one leg through the holes and what you were supposed to do was to identify them like number 1 was Liz Rohler and number 2 was Naomi Clagett and number 3 was Ruth Wilson, which was fine and it was a nice game—everybody enjoyed that—except that some of the guys got frisky and it looked like a ten foot long white caterpillar with all these sticking out of there and all guys flailing around them. But the basement picnic, we used to take over Island Park and they had refreshments and it was a real nice experience.
John Vollbrecht
The basement always had a bad name.
Bob Barr
The basement was the second biggest department store in town. The upstairs was the biggest department store and Rike's basement had more volume than Elder-Johnson. Old Arthur Beerman used to come over there and pull the tags off of the stuff and compare prices and compare items and we competed hard. We really did.
Elizabeth Rohler
Remember Bob when we hit the million dollar mark down there? Times were bad then and we did a million dollars that week. Wasn't it in a week? Anyway, we hit a million dollars once.
Naomi Clagett
I remember how Mr. Fred Rike had a meeting on the first floor and he said, "Our goal for this month of December is one million dollars." That was Fred Rike.
John Vollbrecht
I almost lost my life in the fire. I worked from Thanksgiving to Christmas every day and usually until nine or ten o'clock at night at the store. I was in there one Sunday and I was restocking my outposts—little departments we had on different floors of the store—and it was about two o'clock in the afternoon and I heard fire engines and thought, "Gee, that sounds like they stopped pretty close." And I went over to Main Street and didn't see anything and I went over on the Second Street side and there were the fire engines out there and there was a lot of smoke and just as I was looking, poof! Smoke went out across Second Street. You could hear the glass tinkling when the windows blew out. I thought, "Gee, I better get out of here." So I went over to the escalator and I looked down—there was nothing but smoke. I was on the fourth floor and smoke was on the third floor. I thought, "Well, I can't go that way. Better use the back stairs because those doors are always kept closed and there shouldn't be any smoke in the halls." And I opened the door and everything was clear. I went down the steps and come out on the main floor and the whole bank of windows on Second Street was aflame and I went down to the door where they leave people who are working odd hours and the doorman was there and I said, "Charlie, turn some lights on this place." He said, "I can't turn them one." I said, "Well, did you try?" He said, "No, but look." Flames were all over that area. Anyway, I said, "Well, let's try." We went over and we turned the lights on so you could see something and I saw the fire department on Main Street and then they come around on Second and I opened the doors for the fireman and the first guy coming through the door was Leonard Glander. He had been out taking pictures of our Christmas window. Then the firemen started coming in. Horace Stokes came down and had an insurance man with him and he said, "John, you count the merchandise as they take it out the back." How could I dump all the stuff? Well, there wasn't anything to count. Everything was burned up. Then before long, Stokes came out and said, "John, don't try counting that stuff." I said, "Well, I can't anyway." So, we had these portable tables, two deckers, and he said, "Let's put down one portable." And then we had these little stock carts. He said, "Put down one stock cart, one two tiered table." And that's the way we took an inventory. Didn't mean a thing then I think after we did most of the work they decided they wouldn't even use that. I wasn't scared, but I was thinking when I looked down at the third floor and saw it was full of smoke—it hadn't come up to the fourth floor yet.
Ruth Vollbrecht
And I was at home with my three little kids and the television was on and they said, "Fire at Rike's!" And I think, "Oh, Johnny's down there!"
Elizabeth Rohler
I can remember how they used to put chains out along the escalators. There was so many people come in during the holidays. You almost had to wear a helmet to get through to your department.
Ruth Wilson
Back to the Christmas carols that Naomi mentioned a while ago. Do remember how they used to start at the top—the whole choir—and go all the way down the escalators? Customers would come in just to hear that. Whatever floor they were on, they'd stand and listen to it.
Gilbert McDaniel
When I was leafing through our scrapbook here, I noticed something in here that they always referred back to in management meetings, the creed of the Rike-Kumler Company. It says, "We believe in Dayton and its growth. We believe in a good name, absolute integrity, honest value, courtesy and kindness, progress, originality, dignity, justice and love of work are bound to win. These are and shall remain the fundamental principles of our business."
Ruth Wilson
Do you remember Mr. Rike used to say we had to be all things to all people and when you think about it, department stores in those days were like mini malls. They had everything you wanted. They had a hardware department, they had a cosmetic department. They were. They were mini malls. You had one roof that you shopped under.
Naomi Clagett
I don't know if any of you have seen this book [Paper, Mister! ]. It's written by a chaplain. He was with Sinclair and then he worked at Miami Valley Hospital. He was a newsboy at the corner of Fourth and Main back in the thirties and he's written that book. Gives the whole downtown picture.
Gilbert McDaniel
Before I started at Rike's, I sold newspapers downtown and my corner was at the Van Cleve Hotel at First and Ludlow Street and at that time they picked an ideal newsboy out of the City of Dayton. They were showing the movie at Lowe's Theater called The Bowery and Jackie Cooper was a newspaper boy in it and they picked an ideal newsboy out of each city and I was picked out of the City of Dayton and I can remember the thrill. They took me down to Rike's in the boys department there and they outfitted from head to clothes. I had knickers on and the whole outfit and then I was a guest of Jackie Cooper for a day at the movie there and they took us to dinner up at the fifth floor dining room and then we went over to see the movie at Lowe's Theater.
Naomi Clagett
The only thing that I'd like to say, of course I belong to the Senior's group and I do have a tape if they'd be interested in seeing it. It interviews customers and it interviews people who worked there. It's not a professional job but it's not bad. There was a little pamphlet put out in 1853 and 1953 when they had the hundredth anniversary that says "Grandma shops here."
Bob Barr
Bob Corbin and I had to sing Once in Love with Amy. Remember that song? And to this day, if he walks up and sees you, and I see him fairly often, he calls me "hambone" because every time I'd sing Once in Love with Amy I'd upstage Bob Corbin and when upstage a state representative they remember that for years and years. He still calls me "hambone".
Meredith Moss
My memories are from the other side. I remember coming down as a little girl. On my birthday we would come to the dining room and get the little hen filled with creamed chicken and my mother used to bring me down to Rike's to get my pair of saddle shoes every year for the new school years—my Spaulding saddles, black and white saddles. Then as we grew up, of course we would take the bus downtown to Rike's. That would be a teenage Saturday was taking the bus down to Rike's and having lunch on the mezzanine and shopping. I have very nice memories of growing at Rike's and then my dad as Bob mentioned the key req. I think Rike's was one of the first stores to use key req.
Marilyn Shannon
I was going to mention the chicken, too. I moved to Dayton in 1964 and I had three girls in a row and I remember going down to Rike's to buy coats. I think the name of the brand was Gastworth or something like that—a really fine children's coat that you could let the sleeves out. It had built in sleeves where you'd pull the thread. It was just a really high quality coat. I remember buying my daughter a coat there and we went up to the dining room and had the chicken pie and it was really a treat for her to go downtown and do that. I remember the White Flag days. Those were real sales. And then finally, I was one of the last people in the building when it closed down and the reason for that is I used to be the director of the Miami Valley Arts Council and we had our offices in Lazarus at the end of its life as a building. So we had all our things there and so we kind of watched the store from the inside just shrink down. They were having all those sales and you'd see the merchandise on the floor and the next day you'd go and it would be a little bit smaller area and in fact it closed a lot sooner than they thought it was going to because the merchandise went so fast. But we had until the end of the month to get out—this was the end of January [1992j—so I was up there every night trying to go through all the Miami Valley Arts Council records—we were going to move someplace else, but it was a good chance to go through and toss. So every night I'd be in the building when everybody had gone except the watch people and all the lights were off and I'd turn off the lights and go down with my little flashlight and go out and it was kind of a spooky feeling. It was a very sad feeling, too, to see the whole thing close down. One thing that was interesting, though, when the Arts Council was there we had an art gallery there that you might remember. It was in different places. At one time it was on the second floor right by the lingerie department so everybody would come tumbling by the lingerie department to go to our gallery. Then, at the very end, we were up on the third floor in the old travel office—we had a nice gallery up there—and I enjoyed having the art gallery there and having an opportunity to show art in unexpected places when people might not go to an art gallery they might walk by and see something in there, so I know that at that point Lazarus was looking for something to fill up their space and it was Margaret Yoko who was able to get us the space and everything, but I really appreciated being there. It was very sad for it to close as well.
Bob Barr
There are a lot of folks around this table who agree with you and a lot of folks around this table, they didn't go there the last few days because it was a real traumatic thing because as you felt in this room today there was a certain camaraderie of people. You knew who bought gloves. You knew who worked in the Tyke Shop and set up these things. You knew who people were and there was identity of human beings and I think that's the fact that we can get together like this and be among friends after all these years is a testimony to Rike's as well.
Gilbert McDaniel
Here's a sign posted in super basement advertising department in Bill Duncan's office, 1940—"If you don't have it, get it and if you have it, get rid of it."
Ruth Wilson
Both of you mentioned the little chickens. They got those through us originally, through the gift department. We carried them in the department and they decided it would be a good thing to have and then also they had a dessert compote in blue glass and a blue plate and that originally came through us, too.
Bob Barr
We used to open up Monday nights. They used to hand out dollar bills to all of us so we could buy our Monday night supper.
Ruth Wilson
They started opening at night during the war to take care of people that couldn't come shop in the day time.
Bob Barr
Margaret Mayor used to stand there on the first floor and hand out dollar bills. Remember we used to get a Christmas bonus? Fifty dollars or one week's salary, whichever was less.
Gilbert McDaniel
Remember Erma Bombeck? She used to take at RK News luncheons.
Naomi Clagett
She worked in my department.
The following transcription of the session has been edited, with repeated phrases or interruptions deleted to make the text flow more smoothly. It is suggested that visitors who find the text interesting take the time to listen to the audio portion of this session. A more detailed text will eventually be added. * Note: The last minute or so of the audio portion of Part One was lost. Fortunately, the missing contents of the tape was transcribed and can be found below. This missing part has been highlighted in italics.
