Staff Writer
As a kid, Doug Zeigler hid in the clothes racks, tearing the price tags off the clothes, as his mother shopped at the J.C. Penney Department Store on Sweden Street in Caribou.
Aroostook Republican photo/Debra Walsh
Roland Cyr, the former operations manager at the J.C. Penney’s department store, stands next to the portrait of James Cash Penney which was hung in the popular Sweden Street store for decades. Cyr keeps the historic picture in his garage.
A dozen years later, he got a job building and repairing bicycles at the store. Assigned to the store’s basement stockroom, he also sorted through and prepared new merchandise for sale.
“For the next seven years, I was putting those price tags back on,” said Doug, who now lives in Massachusetts. “I guess God does work in mysterious ways.”
Doug’s memories are among the numerous stories solicited by the Aroostook Republican to be featured in the coming weeks. Recollections from as far away as San Jose Ca., and as near as Water Street in Caribou were shared with the newspaper as a tribute to the store which served as an anchor to the city’s downtown district.
Names like Roland Cyr, Mary Mitchell, Betty Branscom and Joe Gaston were as familiar to the shoppers as the names of their own family members.
After the store closed in 1993 when a new J.C. Penney’s opened as one of the main anchor stores in the Aroostook Centre Mall in neighboring Presque Isle, the building remained empty, slowly deteriorating.
Last year, the building was sold to the U.S. Postal Service, which had the structure demolished. A parking lot is under construction to make room for the USPS’s mail trucks and customers’ vehicles.
Known as the Corey Building, the structure was built with Canadian bricks by Edward T. Corey in 1920. Besides the Penney store, it housed the Corey Hotel on its upper floors. Ann “Noonie” Gagnon lived in a five-room apartment in the hotel for 19 years as she was growing up.
“I remember the stories my dad used to tell about building that hotel and store,” said Ann.
Immigrants from Lebanon, Her father and his mother, Ayouka Corey, came through Ellis Island, eventually settling in Caribou at the age of 27.
“I remember the smell of clean, crisp white sheets when I helped Corinne Nadeau clean the rooms; the closet with its hanging room keys (and) the wooden phone booth with its built-in seat, ashtray and folding door,” Ann recalled.
She said that she could run up the 31 steps of the old wooden staircase (no elevator) before the entry door shut behind her.
I have lots of memories in my heart,” Ann said.
Ann said she is grateful that the granite stone with the Corey name and year of construction inscribed on it, placed on the front of the building was saved by the Soderberg Consruction crew that demolished the building.
Maxine Hybarger from San Jose, grew up in Perham and writes that she always had to wear her sister’s hand-me-down clothing.
But, there was one Easter Sunday when everything she wore to the service at the Perham Baptist Church was “brand new.”
“It was the day before Easter and mother was trying to pin up a dress that my sister had,” Maxine wrote. “I was standing on the kitchen table and wasn’t standing still.”
Her father told her to cooperate while her mother attempted to mark the hem for the alterations.
“I burst into tears and said ‘I never get anything new for Easter,’” Maxine remembered. “Everyone else always get something new for Easer. I always get (my sister’s) discards.”
Maxine said that her father lifted her off the table, saying, “You are right. Let’s go shopping.”
Father and daughter drove to Caribou and went to the J.C. Penney store, where her father told the sales clerk that his daughter needed a new outfit for Easter.
“With her help, he bought me the most beautiful suit that I have ever seen,” Maxine wrote. “It had small accordion pleats made from a small plaid of pink, blue, yellow and white. The jacket was blue with a trim made from the plaid material.”
The shopping trip didn’t stop there. Her father purchased all new underclothes, socks, shoes, purse and hat to match.
“I was so happy,” she said. At the Easter church service, with a great deal of pride she told a little friend that everything Maxine was wearing was brand new. “My mother and father glowed,” she wrote.
Several times a year, Penney’s “Pixy” photographers came to town to take pictures of children.
In this case, this Pixy picture taker from Pennsylvania found the love of her life during a stint in Caribou.
Chris Belanger wrote that Monday, Labor Day, 1975, was a “day filled with promise. I could feel it right down to my (unbuckled) earth shoes.”
She cruised into Caribou and settled in at the Caribou Hotel. She took a walk to the downtown to find the Penney store.
On the way back, she “heard the deep throated rumble of a hot car,” she wrote. “The source was a 1963 split window coupe Corvette … beautiful in white with candy apple red … headed around the square.”
To create a convenient pause, she knelt to buckle her earth shoes.
The car pulled up with its driver’s head hanging out the window. “Hey, how’s it going,” the male driver, Bill Belanger, crooned. “Hey, just great,” Chris returned.
Six days later Chris accepted Bill’s marriage proposal.
“I don’t wear earth shoes anymore, but without them, J.C. Penney, Caribou, Me., a Corvette and Bill Belanger, I wouldn’t be this happy,” Chris wrote.
Barbara Borden Young wrote from Marblehead, Mass. that her favorite Penney memory was buying Argyle socks and “pulling them to our knees. They would match our dyed white Bucks shoes.
“We sure made a fashion statement,” she wrote.
Anyone buying shoes at the popular department store had the now rare treat of having his or her feet measured for size and width.
Debbie Jean Jordan of Caribou remembers that routine well.
“I remember sitting in a leather chair, fidgeting, as a sales person measured my feet, then fitted them to polished white patent leather Mary-Janes, blue and white PFs and sturdy plain brown shoes,” she wrote.
The clothes racks, those “steel and circular obelisk frames,” with fabric hanging down to the floor, made “excellent fortresses for impromptu games of hide and seek,” Debbie recalled.
“Years later, I can better understand my now dear departed mother’s anguish as she sought out her high-spirited children from beneath layers of fabric,” Debbie wrote.
“We really did unknowingly put ourselves at risk for being stolen from our parents on more than one shopping excursion,” Debbie wrote. “Our giggles preceding us, we would take hold of wire hangers, sliding them across the silver clothes rack parting the sea of silk, almost like God parting the waters for Moses.”
In addition to shopping opportunities, the J.C. Penney store offered many young people a chance for their first real job.
Gerry Ouellette of Hermon, started work there when he was 15 years old and continued through his high school and technical college years.
Gerry built and repaired bicycles, checked in merchandise, dressed manikins, changed light bulbs and “carried every heavy object know to a young man.”
Since all the freight came on trucks and were stored in the basement, Gerry remembered how it had to be all carried upstairs “eventually” by pull cart.
It was “back-breaking,” he wrote.
He knew every item that came and went through the store since he opened every delivery box.
He remembers when the hotel above had a broken water pipe that leaked onto the women’s lingerie department.
We had to rinse out by hand every panty and bra in the store that got wet — hundreds of them,” Gerry recalled.
“You should have seen the stock room as we hung the women’s underwear up. It was one of the funniest sights to see …” Gerry wrote.
One of those bikes that Gerry repaired about 30 years ago was delivered to a young lady, who had a friend with her named Debora Cyr.
Gerry said she “smiled at me, we talked and that led to dating her,” Gerry said. The couple will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary in August.
Next week, the Aroostook Republican will continue with its series of J.C. Penney memories.
Roland Cyr, former Penney employee, hold the doors during the “Midnight Madness” sale on June 26, 1974. This photo is part of Cyr’s extensive scrapbook collection of J.C. Penney memorabilia.
Contributed photo
Lights were ablazing during this photo taken of the J.C. Penney store on Sweden Street during one of the “Midnight Madness” summer sales.
This photo, taken from the Roland Cyr collection, shows the shopping crowd on the main floor at the J.C. Penney store during the 1974 Midnight Madness sale. The photo was taken from the stairs leading to the second floor of the store.
