Early trauma in an Ames

[0588kid]

Well, it wasn't Ames yet. It was Murphy's Mart (which everyone had the irritating habit of calling "Murphy Mart"). About 1982 or so this store became Ames. But it was back in the Murphy's Mart days I learned the terrors... of sales tax.

I may have been 5 years old. I had one American dollar to my name. I went in the store by myself (kids were allowed to do this in America at one time) and looked for something marked $1.

I found it. Milton Bradley dominos. Double Dragon. $1.00.

I went to the front and presented the checkout lady at register 2 (who was a "lifer" and would later be a co-worker when, 12 years later, I would become an Ames associate!) with my two items: the dollar bill and the dominos.

She asked me for $1.04. I told her she was wrong, it was supposed to be $1.00. She said I had to "pay the tacks." I had no idea what she was talking about because I didn't have any tacks. I had literally never heard of the word or concept of tax before in my life.

She lectured me about making sure to bring enough money for tax and just let me pay my $1.00. I admit that even today sales tax still sounds as dumb and unfair as it sounded then.

Later, in the same store, I would charge my neighbors thousands of dollars in taxes as they consumed cartloads of Ames goodies. And when I happened to be at register 2, I used to imagine my younger self going through that line with his dominos.