Sears Catalogue Closes Chapter in Small Town’s Life : Retail: The ‘Wish Book’ store is the only source of mass-priced merchandise in Lone Pine, Calif. The outlet closes Monday.
Too arthritic to walk or drive without discomfort, Betty Bever, 67, makes her way around this town at the foot of Mt. Whitney in a wheelchair. For years, she has depended on the Sears catalogue store here for many of her shopping needs.
On Monday, the store that filled her kitchen with appliances and her drawers with clothes will close as part of Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s plan to discontinue its catalogue operations.
For Bever and others who live in this town of about 2,000, many of whom are retired, the closing of Sears after 24 years will cut them off from affordable goods and service. Many will now be forced to travel at least 60 miles to find the same type of selection and price.
“There are a lot of retired people in this town who can’t take care of themselves too well,” Bever said. But with Sears, all the “Wish Book” had to offer was only a phone call away. “And it’s the only low-income store we have here.”
The nation’s third-largest retailer is shutting down about 2,000 catalogue outlets across the country as part of a massive restructuring program announced in January.
In addition to serving as a place to order and pick up items in the catalogue, the Lone Pine store provided delivery and repair service for heavy appliances, handled returns on unwanted or damaged items and fielded questions from customers.
Lone Pine will be one of three towns in the Owens Valley--wedged in the heart of Inyo County--to lose a Sears catalogue store. Outlets in Bishop and Mammoth Lakes are scheduled to close by the end of the summer. An outlet in Ridgecrest, 75 miles south of Lone Pine, will hear in April whether Sears will keep it open as an appliance outlet.
In Lone Pine, news that Sears was closing has hit residents hard.
“This makes us mad, it hurts real bad--because the little towns need this,” said Elsie Ayers, 79, who owns Lloyd’s of Lone Pine, a clothing store specializing in Western wear.
“I have a kitchen full of Sears appliances bought purposefully because I knew we had a Sears store that would repair them,” said Don Echelbarger, 74. “Finding this kind of service in this kind of area is very difficult.”
Without Sears, Lone Pine will lack a store that sells major appliances such as refrigerators, washers and dryers. Clothes too will be tougher to find. The town’s two remaining clothing stores sell mostly specialty items, and their smaller sales volumes made them no match for Sears’ prices.
Residents will still be able to purchase TVs and VCRs at the local Radio Shack and tools at the True Value Hardware store.
Still, “Sears has always had such a good name,” said Bob Onstenk, 70, who bought the catalogue store with wife Libby, 59, five years ago. “People always want to buy the Kenmore appliances, the Craftsman tools or the Die Hard batteries.”
Sears has offered to convert some catalogue stores to appliance outlets. But even with the Lone Pine store’s net sales last year of more than $344,000, Libby Onstenk--who managed the store--admits that the town is too small to support an appliance store.
“It has not been what you would call a money-making business,” Bob Onstenk said. “But you could make a living off it.”
The closure, however, will deplete the Onstenks’ savings. Sears has offered to pay them 10% of the store’s gross revenue from 1991 or 1992, whichever is higher. That means the Onstenks will get about $34,400. But they paid $90,000 for the store in 1988, so they will not even recover their original investment.
And the Onstenks still have to pay the $9,000 owed on the building’s lease, which runs through the year. They plan to live on Libby’s pension from TRW, the Redondo Beach aerospace company where she worked for 25 years, and Bob’s Social Security.
With Sears gone, more residents will be forced to make long treks to discount stores in Bishop (60 miles north), Ridgecrest or Los Angeles (210 miles south).
Many in town don’t own a car or have a major credit card, which is usually needed to make mail-order purchases from catalogue houses. These customers, most of whom are retired, have used cash at Sears, Libby Onstenk said. For them, a shuttle to Bishop three days a week will offer the only avenue to city prices.
Even younger folks such as Jill Gilmore, 27, a waitress at P.J.’s Cafe, have come to depend on the store. She and her husband, a produce clerk at Joseph’s Market, work full time and have five children. “We don’t have time to go shopping out of town,” Gilmore said. “We buy everything from that Sears store.”
Local merchants worry that the departure of Sears will hurt their business.
“It takes another tooth out of the cog of our little business economy,” said Kirk Peek, who owns Kirk’s Barbershop. “If people go shopping somewhere else, they might get a haircut while they are there. Then what do I do?”
Emily Bustos, who owns Moe’s Liquor Store, said residents will wise up to that reality. “If you don’t support your town, Lord in heaven, it’s not going to be there,” she said.
Beyond the impact on shopping, the Sears closure is dealing another blow to the morale of residents who still harbor resentment about the town’s decline.
Main Street--also known as U.S. 395--is dotted with ghostly reminders of a town that thrived in the 1950s on its mining and soda ash industries, and as a site for Hollywood Westerns. Tighter environmental regulations ended the mining, and changing tastes slowly sent the movie studios packing.
But many residents still remember those years when Lone Pine boasted a movie theater, six fine restaurants, three car dealerships, a J.C. Penney and a Safeway supermarket.
And they recall with more than a tinge of bitterness the years before the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power bought up land and started pumping the valley dry to help fuel the growth of Los Angeles.
Back then, a Lone Pine alive with youth had 1,000 more residents and was as big as Bishop, now the biggest town in Owens Valley. Lone Pine High School enrolled 240 students; today that’s dropped to 133. Ranchers busily lassoed cattle, and fruit orchards in Manzanar to the north flourished.
Back then growth, and at least a little progress, seemed possible.
Today, without any surface water for irrigation, available land or industry to grow, the town would be hard pressed to return to its bustling heyday.
More likely, Sears will be just one more empty building on Main Street, said Ray Powell, president of the Lone Pine Chamber of Commerce. Three blocks from Sears, the building left abandoned when Schat’s Bakery closed five years ago remains vacant.
An empty Sears will stand as a reminder of the downside to small-town life.
“Sears is just another service we are going to have to do without,” said Mary Sinclair, manager of the Chamber of Commerce. “But we have come to accept this kind of thing in rural America.”
