We had some older friends over for dinner this weekend, and when they saw my book cover both of them said, “I used to work at a department store like Thalhimers!” Their memories of their hometown stores were nostalgic, old-fashioned, and totally charming.
My friend Tom recalled his local store in rural Wisconsin that had pneumatic tubes that would “suck” a container full of money up from the sales floor up to the accountants on the mezzanine so they could make change and send it back downstairs to the customer. The containers traveled ingeniously by air compression through the tubes, whirring back and forth across the ceiling.
Thalhimers had such a device when they were located at Richmond’s 5th and Broad Streets in the early part of the 1900s. My great-great-grandfather Isaac and his brother Moses sat at desks on the mezzanine of their store, Thalhimer Brothers, where they would ink purchases into their ledgers and handle customers’ transactions. Here’s a little excerpt about it from Finding Thalhimers:
With each sale, a salesperson put the customer’s money and a certificate of transaction into a wire basket. Pulling the ropes of a pulley caused the basket to spring across the ceiling from the sales floor to the mezzanine. There, Moses inked his pen and entered each transaction into a large ledger book. He placed a receipt and the customer’s change back in the basket, and back to the cashier it would fly.
The traveling basket delighted Isaac’s children, and many years later his grandchildren, who would cradle mugs of hot Horlick’s Malted Milk as they sat in the balcony and cheered the bouncing basket along. Sometimes Isaac would let them fetch the money from the basket and hand it to him. To the children, this was not just a balcony: it was Seventh Heaven.
Now pneumatic tubes can only be found at bank drive-thrus, where they transport my deposit to the banker and a lollipop in return (if the banker sees my daughter waving frantically from her car seat). Imagine if instead of swiping your credit card at Target, you and your kids could watch your money go flying up through a tube and come back with your change…and a lollipop, of course!
Finding Thalhimers 
Catching up on your posts and had to comment on this one 🙂 Have you been to Weaver’s in Lawrence? It’s an old, family-owned department store anchoring Mass St. and they still use the pneumatic tubes! Every receipt is written up, vacuumed to the accounting department, change is made and slurped back to the customer. Love that you tell this story and very excited to read the whole book!