T.G.&Y. Stores:Gone but not forgotten

[ctchandler]

SoonerGeezer,
There was one on Lincoln Blvd., just South of Lincoln Plaza.
C. T.

The only Spartan store I remember, was just north of Reno on May avenue, on the east side of May avenue. What would be south of the Coke building.

[soonergeezer]

I had time to kill today and I began to think about this thread. Can you imagine the amount of people in the Greater OKC area that either worked for TG&Y or had relatives that worked there? Also, how many youngsters borrowed merchandise from TG&Y. The older people that read this thread how many of you got your Christmas presents from Dear Old (TG&Y) Santa Claus? I remember one time I was told to play Santa (did not want to). I put on the costume did the HO-Ho-HO thing. first kid came up said "You're Not Santa" "what did you do with him"? Then he kicked me so hard in the shin I could hardly walk...Took off the suit told the manager I wasn't going to do it.....That was the end...However, the manager was still laughing the next day. We always had a good time at work.......Still miss TG&Y.....Don't You?

My uncle worked for T G &Y, in the Tulsa area. It was the only job he ever had, started at age 17, and worked for them until his retirement. He started at the Utica Square store, and when he retired he had moved up to (I think) a regional manager. I believe he was living in Phoenix when he retired. Maybe you remember him, his name was Andy Musick.

[soonergeezer]

SoonerGeezer,
There was one on Lincoln Blvd., just South of Lincoln Plaza.
C. T.

I was not aware of that one, not a big surprise though, I was still in grade school the last time I went to a Spartans.

[albuq1939]

My uncle worked for T G &Y, in the Tulsa area. It was the only job he ever had, started at age 17, and worked for them until his retirement. He started at the Utica Square store, and when he retired he had moved up to (I think) a regional manager. I believe he was living in Phoenix when he retired. Maybe you remember him, his name was Andy Musick.

Andy Musick lived in Albuquerque, NM. He was manager of the Old Town TG&Y store at Central and Rio Grande and he hired me as assistant Mgr in April, 1962. I then went to work as an air traffic controller in October 1962 and moved to San Antonio, TX. In early 1964 I moved back to Albuquerque and re-established contact with Andy. I resigned from the FAA in 1965 and again worked for TG&Y at 1520 Eubank. Andy was a TG&Y regional manager for the entire state of NM at that time and had an office in the back corner of the Eubank store. The manager of the store was Bill Brundige. I later transferred to the store on 4th St. for a time (Jerry Hailey was manager) and then to Santa Fe store where Ray Hise was manager.
In 1967 I was again hired by the FAA and worked as an air traffic controller for 22 more years before retiring in 1989. I maintained contact with Andy Musick until his passing in, I believe, 1987. He was a great manager, regional manager, friend and teacher. I have very fond memories of him and my time at TG&Y. Soonergeezer, if you wish, you may contact me at ronsartain@msn.com with any questions. Ron Sartain

[biznesschic1959]

TG&Y. The place your mother took you to at the last minute, buying a gift for the birthday party your were invited to, but forgot to tell her about it.

[gjl]

I had a friend that after graduating from high school in the mid 70s went to work at the TG&Y offices on Santa Fe. Either 36th or 50th. He was doing something with computers there too. It's hard to imagine a business using computers in their offices back in the mid 70s, but in 1974 at OSU I had classes writing computer programs and we would write them out on what we called IBM punch cards. Then you would take your stack of cards and feed them into the computer. So I guess if we were doing it there, maybe businesses were using them too.

[Jim Kyle]

Businesses were definitely using computers by the 70s, but they were huge things that required special rooms and literally tons of air-conditioning. In 1967, I taught a class in computer system design at the OSU Tech Center, then located in an old elementary school building on NW 10 just east of Penn; I had been "volunteered" by my employer, General Electric. I didn't keep it up after that single year went by, but one of my students was a computer operator at Baptist Hospital, and one evening the whole class took a field trip over to the Oklahoma Tax Commission offices on Lincoln Boulevard, to ooh and ah over the commission's brand-new IBM System 360 installation. The boss then took us down into the basement and showed us the ancient IBM 1440 that the new system supposedly replaced, but which was still being used because the new software still didn't work right. The 1440 was only about twice the size of an extra-large commercial refrigerator. The Systrm 360 had many large cabinets and its own room...

[Prunepicker]

General64 worked at TG&& for years. I wish he'd come back and tell us
some of his stories.

[ctchandler]

Jim (and GJL),
More like the 60's. Mid 60's in fact. I was teaching programming at a tech school in 1968, and we had an IBM360. I started working on computers in 1965.
C. T.

Businesses were definitely using computers by the 70s,

[Jim Kyle]

Yep, there was at least one UNIVAC installation here when I came back in February of 1962, and the Oklahoman was using IBM gear to handle their accounting and subscription list but had not yet graduated to using them to produce the content. The first computer-generated newspaper was in England, as I recall, around 1965/66; it used special hardware to etch metal litho plates direct from stored text!

[Prunepicker]

Yep, there was at least one UNIVAC installation here when I came back in
February of 1962...

UNIVAC. Oy vey.

Do you know what's incredibly ironic? My iPhone has more capabilities
than the UNIVAC ever had. For what it's worth the Commodore 64, which
is my computer of choice, is far more powerful.

By the way I've upgraded to the B256.

Technology is amazing.

[Jim Kyle]

UNIVAC. Oy vey.

Do you know what's incredibly ironic? My iPhone has more capabilities
than the UNIVAC ever had. For what it's worth the Commodore 64, which
is my computer of choice, is far more powerful.

For that matter, I have far more computer capability in my home office, with two machines totalling 7 GB of RAM and just short of a terabyte (1,024 GB) of disk, than existed in the huge MULTICS installation I used back in 1970-75 to do document processing. That beast required a couple of thousand square feet of air-conditioned space, and had an amazing (for the time) million words of RAM, equivalent to about 4 MB since its "word" was 36 bits rather than 8. The disk units were about 5 MB each, and each was the size of a home washer or dryer. The cost was easily in seven figures! For that matter, my wife's personal machine has almost as much power as my two; it's a couple of years newer than my newest one.

To say that technology is amazing is a massive understatement. I find the advances difficult to comprehend. Then I remember that my father, orphaned at the age of 12 and growing up in the boonies of Little Dixie, began working as a muleskinner building railroads before WW1, and lived to see men going to the moon (he didn't quite make it to the landing however). What we've experienced in advances doesn't seem like a lot, compared to what he saw happen over the years!

[Urbanized]

Ran across this thread and have been stuck in it all evening. Though I grew up in Wichita, I still have fond TG&Y memories, including Oklahoma TG&Y memories/connections.

As for personal memories, I have quite a few surrounding stores in Wichita. I enjoyed seeing the photo of the children looking at models. I bought a number of them there, and the displays in the seventies still looked much like that photo from the early sixties. One I remember really well was of the Concorde. The finished model hung above my bed for years.

Once I recall salvaging a shopping cart from the Little Arkansas River, which ran under a bridge near my house. Someone had taken a cart from a store and then dumped it in the river. I spotted it, ran home, got rope, lassoed it from the bridge and heaved it to the bank.

Then I heaved it UP the bank (no easy feat for a ten year old or whatever I was at the time), identified it as being from TG&Y, and beings dutiful then pushed it maybe a mile through neighborhoods to the closest store. I was a little bit nervous asking for a manager, but I did, and he came to the front of the store where I showed him the muddy cart.

Now, I don't know if I expected a reward or anything - I'm pretty sure I was just hoping for a thank you - but I definitely did NOT expect what I got, which was suspicion (as if I had stolen the cart to begin with) and a "what do want ME to do with it" attitude. Definitely not one of my FOND memories.

[Urbanized]

Other memories and Oklahoma/company connections:

Though I was born and raised in Wichita, my family is from the OKC metro. My family was in Edmond for many years, dating back to the twenties I think, but came here no later than the thirties. My grandmother babysat for one of TG&Y's founders (I don't recall which, though I THINK it was Mr. Young. Coincidentally my MOTHER babysat for the C.R. Anthony family and worked at the downtown Edmond Anthony's in high school.

My grandmother also worked for the Edmond TG&Y (15th and Broadway) for a number of years in the sixties and into the very early seventies before moving to Grand Lake. She worked in (maybe even managed..?) the pet department. I recall visiting her at work when I was very young. She had a passion for tropical fish for most of her life and actually built aquariums for herself and for friends and family members (myself included).

As previously mentioned, my grandma moved to Grand Lake in the very early seventies (maybe '70/'71). I've read some of the discussion of TG&Y's relationship/competition with Wal-Mart, and I remember my grandma taking me to a very early and brand new Wal-Mart in either Ketchum or Vinita or Grove, OK (I don't recall which) when I was very young. Their strategy at the time was much more small-town focused, and they were just starting to expand out of NW Arkansas, starting with NE Oklahoma. She was very excited about it, and I remember her telling me it was the future of retail. How right she was, for better or for worse.

[Urbanized]

Last TG&Y memory of the night (and not my own):

When I was program manager for the Automobile Alley Main Street Program here in OKC, a young guy in the real estate business reached out to me, wanting to network. It was Grant Humphreys, whose father Kirk had recently been elected Mayor. He invited me to lunch at the old Varsity on NW 63rd, where I was surprised to find that he had also invited his father, his dad's assistant Jeff Cloud and his GRANDFATHER (Kirk's father, Jack).

Jack Humphreys (who passed not long ago) was frankly my favorite part of the whole lunch. What a pleasure he was to talk to. But he was fascinated with what was going on along Broadway, and revealed a personal connection. Before forming his own wholesaling company, he had worked for TG&Y when they were headquartered (or at least warehoused) along Broadway in what is now the Hudson-Essex office lofts. In reading this thread and associated links, it seems to me that the time he was talking about must have been the '40s, as they moved to another location around the early fifties.

He obviously had many fond memories of this time, and it was enjoyable to hear him talk about it. He credited his experience there with much of the success he had with his own company, which of course is what started the Humphreys family's various business endeavors, public service, etc. Just makes the point, again how much TG&Y was connected to Oklahoma and most Oklahomans, in some way.

[soonergeezer]

albuq1939: I was so happy to find someone that remembered my Uncle Andy !! I am sorry that it took so long to reply to your post. This is the first time I have returned to this site since my last post. I have lost track of that branch of my family, my Aunt(Andy's wife) passed away as well as his daughter. I would love to have a conversation with you about Andy, but my computer has a virus, and I'm afraid I would pass it on to you if I e-mailed you. I have fond memories of going to the Utica Square store in the 50's when my Uncle was the store manager. If you would like to call me, or send me a number I would like to talk to you. thanks 405-949-0430.

[MonkeyBiz6903]

General64 worked at TG&& for years. I wish he'd come back and tell us
some of his stories.

I was thinking He might have passed away. Seeing how he just disappeared

[Filthy]

My Grandma and Grandpa use to take me to the TG&Y on May and Britton. (SW corner of intersection) This is where I always got to go, to buy water guns, and look at toys. But one of my best purchases made in that store...is still with me today. Sometime in early 1987, when they started to closeout the stores, and make the transition to McCroys my grandpa took me in there, and they had several boxes of baseball and basketball cards. I wasn't much a fan of basketball at all...but if I recall..the basketball boxes were the ones that were 50% off. So, my grandpa bought me all 3 boxes. (I don't remember exactly how much the total was...but probably around $8-$10. At the time, they were just basketball cards to me, but I opened them all, and put them all in my plastic sleeve/pages like all the others.

30 years later, those cards that my grandpa bought me that day are one of the most iconic sports cards ever made. The 1986-1987 Fleer set is considered the holy grail of basketball memorabilia/sports card collecting, including the Rookie cards of Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon...etc... With those 3 boxes of loose packs, I was able to put 2 complete sets together, and several duplicates/triples of star players. I still have most of the cards, yet have sold some here and there over the years to other collectors. There were 3 Michael Jordan RCs total, and I sold one back in 1999 for a substantial amount and still have the other 2. So, that $8 purchase by my Grandpa, has netted me several thousand....and a cool story to tell as well. So, anytime I'm in that area of OKC...I cant help but to think of that TG&Y

[Bullbear]

My Grandma and Grandpa use to take me to the TG&Y on May and Britton. (SW corner of intersection) This is where I always got to go, to buy water guns, and look at toys. But one of my best purchases made in that store...is still with me today. Sometime in early 1987, when they started to closeout the stores, and make the transition to McCroys my grandpa took me in there, and they had several boxes of baseball and basketball cards. I wasn't much a fan of basketball at all...but if I recall..the basketball boxes were the ones that were 50% off. So, my grandpa bought me all 3 boxes. (I don't remember exactly how much the total was...but probably around $8-$10. At the time, they were just basketball cards to me, but I opened them all, and put them all in my plastic sleeve/pages like all the others.

30 years later, those cards that my grandpa bought me that day are one of the most iconic sports cards ever made. The 1986-1987 Fleer set is considered the holy grail of basketball memorabilia/sports card collecting, including the Rookie cards of Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon...etc... With those 3 boxes of loose packs, I was able to put 2 complete sets together, and several duplicates/triples of star players. I still have most of the cards, yet have sold some here and there over the years to other collectors. There were 3 Michael Jordan RCs total, and I sold one back in 1999 for a substantial amount and still have the other 2. So, that $8 purchase by my Grandpa, has netted me several thousand....and a cool story to tell as well. So, anytime I'm in that area of OKC...I cant help but to think of that TG&Y

That is a great story!.. congrats!