America's Store, R.I.P.: K-Mart goes under

Where were you when you heard the news? The news of K-Mart's impending death?

I can tell you where a lot of people were. Waiting in a check-out line at K-Mart. The big retailer has been world-famous for slow service, whether in the aisles or at the cash register. One nearly had to set oneself afire to get a clerk's attention, and stores specialized in staffing one or two checkout lines, leaving the other eight empty. The cashiers were trained to improperly ring up purchases, and a price check could take a month or two, with the original checker resigning halfway through the job and his or her replacement not coming along for another six weeks.

This is not speculation. There's a K-Mart near me. My oldest son got his first real job there. He worked hard. They hugely overbooked him with hours because he would actually show up to work. He could have made management, but decided on music school instead. We still haven't figured that out. Meanwhile, when my wife alerted a cashier that her purchases had been improperly tabulated, she was offered a job on the spot. I myself have been tempted, during slow months in hackdom, to don the red vest of a K-Mart employee. It wouldn't have been so bad. I could have crept back to the supply room and found a place to nap, along with the rest of the staff.

But hitting that panic button is an ever more remote possibility. K- Mart is sinking, taking its blue-light specials, scrawny pantries, greasy food courts, shabby haberdashery, snoozing sales clerks, and Martha Stewart with it. Those distinctive K-Mart buildings will, in the fullness of time, find new occupants, perhaps housing a chain of Korean megachurches. Or perhaps they will be boarded up for a few years, then bulldozed.

But they will be forgotten. For some of us of a certain age, the crash of the K is a stunning development. Once upon a time, K-Mart seemed invincible -- a true Battleship of Commerce. It was the Chevrolet set's Macy's. Its passing reminds us of the frailness of human existence. If K-Mart is mortal, so then are we all. So too, for that matter, is Wal- Mart.

Back when I was a kid, K-Mart was a big deal. It was like a huge supply ship sent to our town by benevolent capitalist missionaries. It was docked in a far section of town, probably because the store was so large you needed a large lot, like the kind you find in an industrial section. Our first eyewitness reports were from neighbors who returned from treks with eyes as wide as pie plates. K-Mart had everything you could dream about: a massive collection of tools, every fishing lure ever made, jon boats, huge bags of dog food, rivers of house paint, bushes and trees, birdbaths, incredible barbecuing machines, ladders that could reach the high eaves, washing machines that could scour week-old egg yolk, plus the most amazing machine of all: the color television set.

These were the days, it should be recalled, when television was a privilege, not a right. Kids were, generally speaking, not allowed to watch during the week, save for perhaps one or two shows if the grades were good. Sunday nights were reserved for Walt Disney and Ed Sullivan. Everyone had black-and-white sets, but we knew of the color option. Like most great breakthroughs, this was an upsetting development. Once the idea of color television took hold of one's mind, black and white seemed pathetic. It was like the difference between hot and cold food, indoor plumbing and the outdoor privy.

One Saturday, as memory serves, our neighborhood's most free-bucking family set out for the Big Store and rolled back a few hours later with a big color box. There wasn't much being broadcast in color, but that didn't matter. The status bar had been inalterably moved. Those of us stuck with black-and-whites were consumed by the dogs of envy. We were second-class citizens. We were falling behind in the evolutionary scheme. After all, which creature is the most advanced: one with color or one without? As it happens, the people of color also had the motor boats, stereos in their bedrooms, the riding lawnmowers. The males of this group obviously had the first shot at the best-looking girls. If we were to catch up, then one day we would have to make our own pilgrimage to K-Mart.

I can't remember my first visit, but none was more memorable than the trip that landed my first fly rod. This was in Colorado, where fly- fishing is something of a religion, surrounded by mystique and reverence, including an understanding that no one should approach the altar of the Great Trout without first spending as much money as possible on tackle and wading clothes.

Those of high-church sensibilities would go directly to the Orvis shop, where they would be tempted by bamboo rods costing thousands of bucks, reels costing many hundreds, and flies going for a couple of bucks a bug. They'd top off the trip with the trout world's version of Sunday best: a set of form-fitting neoprene chest waders so warm you could sleep in a snowdrift without experiencing the slightest chill.