Soully Memphis: A. Schwab

by Devin Greaney

From the MEMPHIS DOWNTOWNER

 

Entering the store, it's immediately apparent how efficiently and orderly it is run. Automatic doors open to polished white floors. A stainless steel snack bar sits to the left, and rows upon rows of cash registers hum to the right. The latest clothing fashions in the northwest acre of the store were selected by the corporate office in Minnesota after extensive market research identifying consumer trends in 2008.

 

No, wait. Wrong store. This is Target.

 

Okay. Entering A. Schwab at 163 Beale, it's immediately apparent how randomly its eclectic wares have evolved. You manually open a glass and wood door and step onto the creaking wood floors. Voodoo and mojo oils sit to the left, and the two registers are new only because the old ones broke. The clothing fashions include overalls and jeans that have never been sold at Wolf Chase Mall nor ever will be.

 

ELLIOT SCHWAB

 

The old general store, despite unbelievable adversity, has made it since the days when parking entailed tying the horse to a hitching post. This was Target in the '20s; Wal-Mart during the Wilson administration. It has survived massive changes by resisting change the best it can, yet changing when absolutely necessary.

Fourth-generation owner Elliot Schwab fits the image of a small-town general storekeeper. He is a friendly, talkative type whose memories of Beale Street go much farther back than his 46 years. He points to some tables where gift items are displayed. “These are temporary counters," he says. "We bought them used." And when were these temporary counters put here? “Oh, about 1911. We don’t like to rush into anything!?

Elliot's great-grandfather, Abe, a Jewish immigrant of German descent, migrated from France and started the general store in 1876. Elliot shows a genealogy chart on the wall that traces the family back to about 1650. “When a problem arises in our family, we do what we call ‘talking to the grave," he says. I ask how Daddy would have handled it, and I get the right answer.

 

Elliot remembers other advice from his father, Abe: "When you've got a problem you cannot figure out, stop what you are doing. Get a piece of candy, go wait on a customer, or go to lunch. The answer will come to you." More than five years after his father's death, Elliot still heeds that advice, as does his sister, Beverly, and his cousins, who are partners.“Beale Street has always been its own little world,” Elliot says. "I remember an unwritten rule on Beale Street. Stores from Third Street west sold items at a fixed priced. From Third Street east, the prices were negotiable. Police gave a bit of leeway to activity on the east end of Beale, while on the west side, it could get someone arrested."

 

Elliot remembers other things from his childhood. ?When I was four or five, my job was to get a flashlight and look under the counter for the change people dropped," he says, adding that the job continues today, and a recent "expedition" netted $3. "My mother and I would get off the bus at Second and Beale, and I would run to the front door. I had red hair at the time, and I looked like a red streak running down Beale."

 

He and his cousins used to stand in the windows as live mannequins. Even his father got in on the game once. "When he moved, he scared a lady so bad she ran down the street screaming!" Other businesses had fun, too. Two pawn shop "pullers" - similar to a greeter at a night club - would begin arguing. One would grab a stick and chase the other down the street, as shocked passers-by looked on. Then the pullers would run back to their shops - laughing the whole way.

 

Today, looking at the key-lime-pie-green walls, Elliot remembers when they gradually painted. January to August 1974. Five years later, he graduated from Central High School, and the next day, he started working at Schwab’s full time.

 

Photos of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination riots in 1968 show a vandalized Schwab’s. Downtown was beginning its downward spiral as residents and businesses moved east. Then an urban renewal effort from 1969 to 1972 razed some 475 structures in the area around Beale.“Beale Street looked like an old Western town with Main Street nothing around it,” Elliot recalls. "I remember seeing a fire at 4th and Beale and it was allowed to burn because it was going to be razed anyway.” Elliot says. “I remember roofs were taken off buildings on Beale.” He says urban renewal was a threat to the future “From the early 1960s, the city tried to get us off the street. Early on, we realized we were in for a fight. I don't want to say we were being harassed, but it was just within the law. Our building was condemned one day and un-condemned the next."

For about a year and a half in the early 1980s, there was no street in front of Schwab's while it was repaved. But by the time Beale had its grand re-opening in October 1983, A. Schwab was a welcome presence once again.

 

Elliott says he knows of only one other ?old general store? that still exists in the country: The Old Strand Emporium in Galveston, TX. ?Most of what they sell now are trinkets and souvenirs,? he says.

 

Schwab's, too, sells trinkets and souvenirs, but that's far from all it sells. There are Civil War Confederate and Union hats. There is chain male to help protect from the swords they also sell. There is a small jar with a tiny footstool inside. “Next time your doctor asks for a stool sample give him this,” he says. There are Schwab’s own salad dressings and jellies. A bag of rubber bands shows it has not lost the general store roots. Although much of the inventory has remained the same throughout decades, much has changed.

 

"Ten years ago or so we sold shoes, Elliot says. ?We decided to get rid of them and marked them down from $1.95 to $4.95. They still were not selling so I put them all together, marked them at $5 per pair and sold them all! Yes, it made no sense, but it worked.

 

Schwab also no longer sells toy guns “except for the ones that shoot rubber bands” nor material by the yard. "We still have some window shades," Elliot notes. "I sell them for $1 apiece. No one uses window shades anymore."

A strange section is the “mojo” department. Incense candles and oils with names like Protection From Envy and I Can, You Can’t offer customers good luck and curse removal. All names were positive. There were no “Contact the Devil” or “Turn Your Ex-Lover Into an Iguana” candles, for example.

 

“There are three major groups of mojo customers," Elliot says. Already you know this will be business advice not available to most MBAs. “One group believes it, and that’s that. The second group buys them just as a novelty. The third group buys them as a novelty, but then something worked, and they become semi-believers!" Perhaps Elliot should be counted among the latter group. One slow day, he as a joke suggested burning some incense labeled “money-making.” Right afterwards a tour bus pulled up. “I don’t deny things I don’t understand!”

"This store could only exist here," he says, looking out over the 20,000 square-foot family and city treasure. "We could not replicate this. The floors creak when you walk in. I miss some things not because they are gone, but because they are such a part of everyday that I no longer notice them. like the sound of this door swinging, and the musty smell of Grandma’s attic. I miss those.”

 

So step inside 163 Beale. You will hear the floors creak and the door swing. You'll smell Grandma's musty attic. But bring don?t bring the credit card. After all, this is a step back in time.

 

<<A. Schwab, 163 Beale, 523-9782.>>