04.06.2026
Yesterday was a strange day, crawling up and down ladders all day while working on installing the museum’s summer show was really bringing back memories of practically living on a fiberglass stairway to the stars back in the ’80s. As if summoned by my verticality, two blasts from my remote mallrat past contacted me to chat, quite out of the blue.
Once I quit my teen-age restaurant job for the final time, I worked for Sears for the last bite of high school and all through community college. There was a gap in there between earning an AA degree and jumping into the journalistic deep end in which I thought I wanted to be an electrician and practiced electrocuting myself for the good of the company. That’s another series of painful yet humorous stories that I’ll save for another day.
It is probably a time of one’s life where everything has added portent, but I still dream that I am working there from time to time. I never dream about the music store, the newspapers, the magazine, teaching high school (for good fucking reason, since that was a nightmare), or even the Exploratorium.
It’s not that I was all that engaged with the work either, although I did learn a lot. I also met some great people, many of which I still speak with today. Truth be told, however, I was really hungover and/or high as fuck a good part of the time. That was really the only way to survive the late-period retail environment.
For younger readers, Sears, in those days, was kind of like Amazon, except… a place. Instead of the internet, which wasn’t a thing, we had a printed catalog that got sent to your house that had everything you could possibly spend money on. I bought a Chevy small block rebuild kit and Moon-shaped hubcaps out of the Sears catalog.
When Christmas rolled around, Sweet Jesus, a totally separate catalog showed up with all the good shit in it. Working the holidays was to navigate a mob scene not often seen out of hurricane relief news footage.
I was working the Christmas Eve Eve that a small commuter plane completely undershot Concord’s Buchanan Field and crashed into the center of the mall, raining glass, burning plane bits, and melted tar down on Santa, his elves, and shoppers alike.
I had just left the baseline madhouse and most likely was cranking Black Sabbath on the way home, trying to get into the holiday spirit, so did not hear the news until I was swept up into a house full of freaked-out relatives. To this day, upon entering any crowded building, I peep my exits, and look around for Santas. One “Ho…” and I’m out.
I hear that our location is the last remaining store in all of California, which is crazy. I should go steal a ladder before it’s too late.
Román Leão 