When does it feel bothersome to wait in a line? Increasingly, my answer to that question would be, almost always. I’m impatient to a fault.
But recently I shared with a friend that I recall with some nostalgia a few examples of people (including me) waiting in lines to enter shops in downtown Hopkinsville. This happened when merchants ran sales that prompted customers to gladly wait their turn on the sidewalk. My younger friend doesn’t share my memory of downtown Hopkinsville in 1970s and ’80s, although her parents surely would.
The stores I’m recalling from that era are Tom Wade’s Men’s Store at Ninth and Virginia streets and Buck’s Ladies Shop on South Main near 11th Street. Both of these businesses ran end-of-season sales — with prices marked down at least 50% — that local shoppers anticipated each year. (Wade’s closed in 2000 and Buck’s followed in 2013.)
In high school I stood in the line outside Tom Wade’s side entrance on the first day the store was open after Christmas. And women waited their turn to get into Buck’s for a chance at a special church dress, wool trousers or a business suit.
Think about it. People drove downtown and stood in lines to buy something they didn’t expect to find anywhere else at such prices.
These are good memories because they were proof of downtown’s vitality in those days.
Today we never expect to see lines outside Hopkinsville businesses.
So when it did happen about a week ago, it got my attention.
Of all places, it happened at the former location of Tom Wade’s where The Book & Bottle Shop is now located.
After seeing social media photos of a line of people, stretching from the bookstore’s front door all the way down the Ninth Street sidewalk toward Main Street, I checked in with owner Rachel Sanders to see what brought out so many people on a muggy Friday evening in July.
Rachel explain the store hosted a Bookstore After Dark party and invited another Hopkinsville business, Blush & Bashful Romance Bookstore, and a few vendors to join the event. There were themed cocktails, desserts and activities.
“We sold 155 tickets (which is way more than our shop can handle, of course), so we had to hold people at the door to prevent over-crowding,” Rachel said.
Then, just as Rachel was preparing to let in the first group of patrons, there was a problem with the store’s alarms. It took another 40 minutes or so to resolve the alarm snafu — and during that time a line of roughly 30 people grew to 70.
“The line kept growing as we let folks in and by the end of the night some people had waited in line over an hour!” Rachel said. “I was very concerned about the wait being an inconvenience, but everyone I spoke to seemed happy to wait in exchange for the experience, despite the rain and humidity.”
Fifty years after patrons waited in lines to pay for new shirts and sweaters, a new group is willing to wait in line for a shared experience in a bookstore.
In addition, a recent series of classic movies shown free of charge at the Alhambra Theatre brought in more viewers than organizers might have expected. Margaret Prim, executive director of the Pennyroyal Arts Council, told me they had 1,270 guests for the shows.
I know there are many signs of vitality in downtown Hopkinsville these days — but these two examples, one from a new bookstore and the other from an old theater, ought to encourage anyone who is invested in reviving the heart of Hopkinsville.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
