1 BEGIN SIDE ONE JANNSON: . June 17 today. My name is Kyle Jannson. I'm talking with Ken Clark, who grew up in Tempe and spent most of his business career in Tempe. What is your first memory of a business in Tempe? CLARK: Well, one of the things that's very different is that if you wanted meat, you went to a meat market. You wanted bread, your bakery goods, you went to a bakery. The idea of a combined supermarket had never come into Tempe -- in fact, maybe never anywhere in America at that time. However, there was an enterprising man by the name of Matley [Benvenuto Matley]. Matley had the store, it would be about the junction of Van Ness and University, on the north side of University where the high-rise dormitories are. He had a small grocery store, and he put in a meat market, and then he put in a clothing store, and then he put in different kinds of hardware. The store ran through from University to Dewey -- that was a short block. In fact, he's the only one in Tempe in the 1900 to. Well, about 1912, his store was flourishing. He serviced a lot of the cattle people who would come down and do all their shopping in one place -- from Globe and Young and points further away where they didn't have anything. But a fellow by the name of Teeter, he had a meat market. He first had the meat market on the west side of Mill in the 400 block. JANNSON: About where your office is now? CLARK: Well, that'd be a block-and-a-half north of where I am. Then he built his own building in back of where the bank is on the northwest corner of Mill and 6th. He built a meat market on the alley in back of that building, the bank building. There would be like 2 two meat markets, three or four grocery stores, two bakeries. One bakery was in the 400 block of Mill. That was the Vienna Bakery. And one was near Matley's on University, about a little west of McAllister, the junction between. And it was run by a little old Dutchman about four foot two, and a very interesting character, very popular with children because he was always giving them a cookie or something when they came in. But the stores often had a case where you'd bring your purchase. The front of it would be all blown glass displays, and he'd have all different kinds of cookies displayed in this glass front. That was rather common in many stores. JANNSON: One of the things I've read and heard is that the stores -- especially in the grocery stores -- items were kept up on the walls, and then you told the clerk what you wanted, and the clerk got down how much you wanted of a particular item. Is that the way you remember it? CLARK: It wasn't anything you could walk around in like a supermarket. You had to tell 'em what you wanted, like you say. If you bought anything, they wrapped it up in paper. They had a roll of paper on the end of the counter, and a big bundle of string that fed out of the middle of it. And they would wrap this all up, and whether it was the meat market, or whether it was the grocery store. They didn't do so much bagging -- practically no bagging. Practically everything was wrapped up. Actually, most of the groceries were sold by a messenger who came to your door and took an order. And the messenger told the housewife what there was in the store in the way of vegetables and that sort of thing. Then he went back to the store and he put this order up. And he would take it back and deliver it. Very few people paid money -- they charged everything. The druggist -- they 3 charged everything. They had a ledger a foot thick. And then once a month you'd go in and settle up your bill. Maybe if it was Laird and Dines, they'd give you a bag of candy or something. Not everybody did that, but that's kind of one thing they did. They never sued anybody. I don't think they ever forced a collection of ANY account. If the person didn't pay, eventually it just got too old and they tossed it out. Dr. Moeur was the principal doctor, and he did very much the same. If you couldn't pay, he'd write it off. In fact, I don't know whether there's any truth to this story or not, but like the hardware store [Tempe Hardware Company], they'd say if some item didn't get put down as to who bought it, they'd put it on two or three people's bill, and then whoever owed it would pay, and the rest of us would complain and he'd take it off. (laughter) JANNSON: How long did this practice go on of just paying the bill once a month? Did it end with the Depression? CLARK: No. It was still going on in the '30s -- it was still going on. We only lived a block from the store. We lived at 7th and Mill, right where now the alley goes through there. We were only a block from them, but it didn't matter, the man came from the store, over to the house, and took the order. He came every day, Monday through Friday. I don't know whether he came on Saturday -- maybe he came on Saturday, too, I don't know. Stores stayed on open on Saturday usually 'til nine o'clock. Otherwise, stores closed at six o'clock. JANNSON: Was Saturday the big shopping day? CLARK: When all the farmers came in, and a lot of people -- everybody's off work that day, so they could get in. There was very little advertising -- nothing like specials. Very 4 limited amount of fruit and vegetables. They weren't long on fruits and vegetables. And they didn't have proper counters to display their vegetables, to keep things cool or keep things fresh -- difficult for them to do that. So usually vegetables were brought by peddlers that would bring things around. They'd go around to everybody's door and peddle it. They had to get rid of it in a day or two, especially in warm weather. Ice. Ice was delivered to you. Everybody had an ice box. Most people had ice boxes that would hold 50 pounds, and they would bring these blocks of ice, 300-pound blocks of ice around, and cut 'em up as they made a delivery. If you wanted ice, there was a card, you put it in the window. If they saw the card in the window, they'd come in and deliver the ice. People weren't home, didn't matter, nobody locked their doors anyway. And so they would just come in and deliver the ice. Of course the ice had to melt and did melt, and you had a pan under the refrigerator. And then when it got full, if you didn't remember it, why, it'd remind you. (laughter) If you lived in a house that was built up off the ground -- and of course many houses were built up off the ground in those days -- you just bored a hole in the floor and put a funnel under it, and then you never had to empty the ice water anymore. (laughs) Little things like that are different. Of course they had . everybody had quite a few salespersons. There was no "help yourself," so you had to have somebody -- especially if it was dry goods or something like that. Of course they sold lots of yard goods, which, of course, they do today. And. So they had people to do that, too. So when you went into a store, you were usually met by a salesperson right away. It isn't like roaming around and trying to find one now. Most of the clothes were purchased out of town, in Phoenix. Clothing stores primarily carried Levis, work shirts, 5 that sort of thing. There was maybe one store, Bucher's -- later became Getz -- they had SOME clothing for men -- not much clothing for women. And there was a tailor in Casa Loma Hotel for many years -- about five foot five, little bitty guy, very popular. He made a suit for you from scratch. That was rather common then. You could go to a tailor, he'd make you a suit. JANNSON: Did people order clothes from, like, Sears catalog? CLARK: Oh, yeah, Monkey Wards -- Montgomery Wards, Sears Roebuck -- they did a big business. Every year you got a catalog from them, a catalog as big as the Tempe phone book, or -- Phoenix phone book, now -- huge catalog, 1,000 pages, everything under the sun. You could buy groceries from 'em, you could buy hardware. You couldn't buy an automobile. The stores went along, didn't change much, year after year after year. They were pretty much stereotyped, pretty much like they'd always been. JANNSON: So they didn't really compete with one another, like some stores do now? _________. CLARK: They didn't have any way, really, to reach the public. See, most people didn't even take the newspaper. Tempe Daily News was not a newspaper -- it was merely a legal sheet.