Long before Wal-Mart, there was Gibson’s Discount Center. That was THE low-cost department store in the small-town Dallas suburb where I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s. Gibson’s had much more to offer than the nearby Mott’s Five & Dime or Ben Franklin. Gibson’s was small compared to the sprawling and overstuffed big box chains of today and did not carry groceries. But when I was a kid, it had all the essentials my working-class family of four could afford: polyester shorts, pants, skirts and dresses; swimsuits; night gowns and children’s sleepwear; gloves and coats; baby stuff; bras, slips, undies, girdles and pantyhose; shoes slightly out of style; cologne and cosmetics; cameras and stereos; jewelry; school supplies, posters, and lunch boxes. It was like an indoor bazaar.
Since my mother took me and my brother there every week, I got to know the place well. By age 5, I started exploring the place on my own, simply breaking away from my mother usually shopping the clothing aisles. It was easy for a little kid to sneak under the racks of hanging clothes. In our family box of photos, there is a picture of me looking up at the Gibson’s camera clerk, who shot me as I was snooping behind his counter. I remember the man, dressed in a clerk smock, resembling a dentist. He was holding a new Polaroid color film camera and aimed down at me, saying enthusiastically “Smile!” Surprised, I looked up at him, and his snapshot caught me biting my lower lip. I figured I was in big trouble. He waited until my mother passed by to give her the photo of me caught committing a crime. Really he was just trying to sell a camera. The Gibson folks were professional and friendly and knew my family as weekly regulars.
Parting the bamboo curtain
During the early 1970s, Gibson’s was getting hip to the times and way in the back of the store installed a shopping section called the Tiki Hut. As I recall it, the section had a thatched roof that reminded me of Gilligan’s Island, a show I watched in reruns every day of my childhood. I was an older child then and loved exploring the weird items found only inside the Tiki Hut. First you had to walk through a beaded curtain made of bamboo. That was really fun to a city kid. I’d walk back and forth through the bamboo strands. I thought it was so cool and that someday when I was a teenager I’d want strands of beads to replace my bedroom door.
The steel-and-metal shelves contained an array of knickknacks from Far Away places like Taiwan, the exotic destination stamped on the bottom of most of the items. There were remnants from a sea-faring life like shells, knotted rope, treasure chests, and lots of brass items like statues of Hindu and Buddha gods and goddesses with strange poses and multiple arms. There were lots of wood carvings made from coconuts, like a smiling monkey with a pipe and sailor’s hat. There were incense burners of brass and wood. And of course this is where you’d find incense like patchouli, a fragrance I’d never in my young life encountered but instantly loved it. I’m sure I bought my first incense burners there, one long wooden and one tiny cone-shaped brass, though I never knew what to do with them for years. I didn’t want to start a fire in the house.
One item I got from the Tiki Hut was an imitation shrunken skull with long white hair. It was made of hard plastic … and glowed in the dark! I had it hanging in my bedroom when a squeamish young cousin of mine dropped by one night looking for me and ran out screaming after seeing that green skull smiling at her. That was funny. But I never knew the small skull would scare anyone. Guess I was a strange kid, a bit of tomboy.
In retrospect, my venturing into Tiki Hut lit a wanderlust which has remained to this day and age. I always wanted to travel the world and explore other cultures. And I was interested in the religions of the world, what people believe when it comes to God and the afterlife and why they believe it. As peculiar as I found those brass Eastern religion gods with multiple arms and awkward poses, some standing on one foot, I was curious. But mostly I was afraid to buy one, my mind echoing Bible school teachings about all the other religions and their false gods and evil spirits that abide in places like the Tiki Hut.
Rumours
By the mid ’70s at Gibson’s , Tiki Hut was a place I considered kid stuff. I had outgrown it and turned my evolving adolescent mind to the record albums in the music department. I spent hours studying rock album covers: David Bowie, Heart, The Eagles, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull. One album Tull put out, Aqualung, featured ‘scripture’ on it: In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him. The blasphemy was so terribly shocking, and yet I kept reading. Dangerous stuff for a suburban teen-age girl to be caught in hand. I felt a little naughty seeing some of the sexual album covers that were the norm in those days. I’d frequently look over my shoulders. When I had a few dollars, I bought one of my first albums at Gibson’s, Toulouse Street by the Doobie Brothers, only to open it up at home and find an interior photo of the dudes, well, at a whorehouse.
Yeah in Gibson’s music section I could feel the rebel vibes: young guys with long hair, beards, jeans and denim jackets, often with their girlfriends, thumbing through the albums for purchase. FM radio or album rock was heard from the latest stereo system for sale. It was clearly where the cool hung out. As I recall, I ventured over there many a time from age 10, splitting my trips to Gibson’s between Tiki Hut and the music department. I fell in love with a clear yellow 45 disc by Grand Funk with the rock hit We’re an American Band and wanted it for my 10th birthday. I got Billy Preston’s The Kids and Me with his hit Nothing from Nothing on another birthday, and mom worked out a deal with me to do a few weeks of household chores for a Glenn Miller memorial tribute double album set. I was in junior high band then and discovered a love for Big Band music and jazz.
I don’t recall seeing anyone I knew from school or my neighborhood all those years I roamed around Gibson’s. Yet I know they shopped there, too. It was the only place in town to explore and discover who you wanted to be someday when you were your own person. By the end of the ’70s, a big mall was built way over on another side of town, actually into Dallas. It was so huge and new that places like Gibson’s couldn’t compete to maintain fickle youth. Besides, the mall had several huge records shops … and Pier One—where I clearly saw my future in home décor, furniture tastes and clothing from the mystical and alluring Eastern world. But for me, Gibson’s Tiki Hut and music department opened the door to a new world of ideas, free expression and ancient knowledge.