
I grew up in a small town in central Connecticut, where fields of nursery seedlings, herds of grazing dairy cows, and acres of net-covered tobacco plants defined the landscape. When I was a little girl, my family shopped for everything from hardware to housewares to clothing at Oberg's Store. I remember trying on a pair of red Mary Janes and prancing across the wooden floor to show them off. But my most exciting shopping excursions were the ones that happened when my grandmother came to visit. She'd take me by bus all the way to Hartford to visit G. Fox & Co., a huge department store and place of wonder. I rode my first escalator and elevator there, and I was entranced when a clerk rang up a sale and sent the sales slip and cash through a vacuum tube to some mysterious destination with a whoosh. In the Toy Department on the 11th floor there was a stuffed giraffe too tall to fit in my house. These shopping trips happened once or twice a year, when Nana would buy me an outfit for Easter or a special hat and coat for winter. One spring we boarded the bus home with a big white rectangular box and a flowered hatbox, containing my bright green coat, with its fashionable three-quarter-length sleeves, and my glorious white organdy hat, with its filmy brim and gossamer rose. I'm the age she was then. I hope I said thank you.