I remember going Christmas shopping in Chicago. We lived in that city from 1974 to 1978, so it was one of those years. We went down town. Often we rode the train in Chicago, but it seems to me that we drove our car for this trip. My memory is not completely clear on this detail, however, and it has been a long time. When we did drive down town, finding parking was always an adventure, but there were parking garages and parking was around a dollar a day at that time. We didn’t have too many dollars, but we didn’t go down town all that often. Our destination was the big Marshall Fields.

For a kid who grew up in a small town in Montana, the scale of downtown Chicago was amazing. The building that was then called the Sears Tower, now called the Willis Tower, was brand new, opened the year before we moved to Chicago. It was, at the time, the world’s tallest building and it employed more janitors and cleaning staff than the entire population of the town where I was born. Marshall Fields Department Store was another amazing building to me. Occupying an entire city block, the 13-story granite building stretches from the corner of Washington and State to Randolph and Wabash. At the time the entire building with two atriums and banks of escalators and elevators was occupied with the largest department store I had ever seen.

I had a pretty good sense of direction when navigating Chicago, at least when we were outdoors. The city is laid out on a grid, eight blocks to the mile and is fairly easy to navigate once you understand that streets all have number designations depicting the distance from State and Madison streets downtown, a block south of the Marshall Fields store. But whenever we went into the Marshall Fields building, I would get mixed up on my directions. When we would emerge from the building, it was common for me to start walking in the wrong direction because I had become disoriented while in the building.

As far as I can remember, we did all of our Christmas shopping in the same store that year. I don’t have a very high tolerance for shopping in the first place and I’m sure that walking around that store, visiting its many different floors and departments was enough of an outing for me. It seemed to me like you could buy anything you wanted in that store, from clothes to toys to luggage to furniture. The Walnut Room was a fancy and expensive restaurant. I’m not sure whether or not we ever ate there, but it was fairly rare for us to eat at downtown restaurants.

What I remember is that we could find what we wanted to purchase in a single building. In those days we had only one credit card and it worked at only one brand of gas station. We usually carried less than $10 when traveling in Chicago. The thought was that you didn’t want to have too much money out of fear of getting robbed, but you didn’t want to have no cash or you might get beat up by a frustrated robber. We paid for most purchases with checks, and we could write checks at Marshall Fields with proper identification. Out of state checks might have posed a challenge, but we had a bank account with a Chicago bank. We didn’t have much money, so each check written involved subtracting the balance in our check register to make sure we had sufficient funds. Times were different.

The memory of Christmas shopping at Marshall Fields came to me yesterday. We did a bit of Christmas shopping yesterday. Between appointments and a short time of doing some volunteer work at the church, we had time to visit a favorite toy store, and a discount shop. We were pretty successful for our first day of Christmas Shopping. Our grandchildren have specific items that appeal to them and often some of them are difficult to find in brick and mortar stores. We know how to find items online, but that is not our preferred way of shopping. We like to support local retail stores. We don’t like all of the business policies of large online retailers. We like to see what we are getting before making a purchase. And there is something fun about going together and thinking about what our grandchildren would like. We managed to find some items for each of our grandchildren. Not bad for a first outing and we were actually doing some Christmas shopping before the first of December - only on the last day of November, but it is early for us.

Of course we paid with our debt card held over a reader that allows a purchase with a tap. The money comes out of our checking account while we stand in the store. I can check the balance on my phone if I want. And we were in Bellingham, where it is very rare to have to park more than a block from your intended destination and both of the stores we visited yesterday have large parking lots with plenty of available spaces. There is no single store in Bellingham that would have everything we needed for Christmas shopping. In fact, we came home and ordered two items online last evening. They will be delivered to our house within a week - plenty of time for us to wrap one of those items and mail it, along with other gifts, to our daughter’s home in South Carolina. We’ve got about two weeks or a bit more before items mailed would arrive after Christmas day.

Maybe I’ve grown more patient as I’ve grown older. Maybe the process of shopping is different when purchasing gifts for grandchildren rather than gifts for siblings. Maybe the luxury of having a small nest egg in a saving account makes shopping a bit easier. Whatever the reason, I had a good time yesterday.

Sunday is the first week of Advent. I’m ready for the preparations to begin - and I’ve even gotten in a jump start on some of the Advent chores.