I have been asked to share with this audience some of my memories of the way it was at Lands' End back in the late '70s, when the entire company was in residence at 2317 Elston Avenue in Chicago. I mean the entire company: management, our retail outlet, customer service, returns, creative, marketing, not to forget The Kitchens of Mary Hutmacher, the mail order equivalent of Sara Lee.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, which isn't hard, since us septuagenarians more or less shuffle through life.

But the way it was, was that I was freshly out of work in Houston, Texas , having rashly agreed to accept a job down there with an agency which cut me adrift after it merged with another agency. Almost instantly I became a "consultant". This is not hard to do. It is only hard to make it pay. So when Gary Comer called me, and showed some interest in using my services, I was all ears.

Up to that time Gary had been writing all the copy for the catalogs which came out about four times a year. He said he no longer had time to do that, so would I consider coming to Chicago for about two weeks, four times a year, to take over that duty? I agreed, trying to keep the hysteria out of my voice.

I suppose I should explain that, many years earlier during a period when I enjoyed a certain eminence in the advertising profession, Gary worked under my direction as a copywriter. I was a stern taskmaster, I am afraid. And I must say, had I known then what I know now I would have treated Gary with a lot more deference. Ah, well...

So, my service to Lands' End began. And I don't mind saying it was a lot of fun.

Ours was a small staff. There was Gary, of course, who had a modest but passably serious-looking office on the second floor of the two story building with a basement that housed us all. And on that second floor there were three other rather sizeable rooms: one served as headquarters for the creative staff, which consisted of Bernie Roer, his assistant Mary Kay McCaw, and the lone writer, Freeman Pittman, and me, during my two week stints; the second big room accommodated three operators, and the tables and racks that held samples, returns and the like; and the third big room was the aforementioned kitchen, with its legendary refrigerator, its coffee maker, its cupboards, and the community table.

The first floor of the building accommodated the retail outlet, a rather nice little place really, under the management of Elsa Gustafson. The basement held our stock. And beyond all this, Mary — who served in multiple roles as consumer service director, assistant to Gary, production department, and maitre d' — had a little office somewhere, as did a young lady who opened the mail containing the orders that were not taken over the phone.

Now, when I would arrive for one of my two week terms of indenture, Bernie would hand me a thick clutch of layouts, executed with a precision which would pretty well let me know how much copy I could write about each item. In itself, that was not too alarming. But then, when I would write what I thought to be some very moving prose, my efforts would be turned over to Mary, who had some sort of magic IBM typewriter which actually set the type that would go into the catalog. Her work would then go back to Bernie who would put the calipers, his T-square, and a micrometer to the block of copy and send the galley back to me with such editorial comments as "Karl: cut 16 lines", or "way, way too long, Karl. Need 63 lines," and sometimes, in exasperation his note would read simply: "Hoo, boy!! Are you kidding?"

Now in these days of the "me generation" any writer worth his salt would go to his grievance counselor and sue Bernie. In those days, no such thing existed. I was under his whip. He ruled with an iron whim. But I'll tell you one thing, I can cut copy a syllable-at-a-time, if need be, having survived that reign of terror.

Bernie, however, was good company at lunch. I know of no one who looked or still looks better in Lands' End clothing. Or who eats better on a Lands' End expense account. Those of us in creative, often joined by Gary, used to take the company Datsun, a miserable automobile — one that must have gotten away from the Japanese without inspection — and head for Big John's, a watering hole on Armitage. The menu there was somewhat limited, but everything that was on it tasted good and didn't cost an arm and a leg. I remember fondly a sandwich called "The Good Egg", and the chili — a gastronomic delight. The crowd there was rather hearty — jeaned, jacketed, and booted, and most ate with their hats on. If you were wearing loafers, you tended to tuck your feet under your chair out of sight.

Now, on days when we didn't go out to eat, Mary's kitchen was a warm and welcome haven. (It's funny. I put in a lot of two week periods in the summer as well as the winter, but I only seem to remember the winter periods. It always seemed to be snowy, icy, windy or a little of all three.)

The fridge held all sorts of containers brought from home, or a fast food place on the way to work. The various containers had labels on them, denoting who owned what. Sometimes with notes of warning like: "You touch, you die" so the jurisdictional disputes were few and far between. I hate to say this, but it is possible that the luncheon procedures that got established in the Elston Avenue kitchen may account for the frightful nonstop eat-and-work luncheon procedures that have taken over in Dodgeville. Mind you, this in a town which houses one of the finest restaurants in the Western world — Reeses!

As I say, I remember the winters on Elston the clearest. We had to make our way up an outside stairway to get to our offices on the second floor. And it always seemed the steps were clogged with snow, or ice, making the footing precarious, and when we got to the top landing we were confronted with a heavy metal door. This door only grudgingly yielded to the key meant to open it, and sometimes we couldn't make it work at all. Then we would lean out and pound on the window which opened into Bernie's section of the office, and hope he was there and would hear us, and let us in. As you can see, a lot of things had to go right before we even got to work!

Now when I say that we had a lot of fun working at Elston I suppose I'm forgetting some of the stresses and strains we were often under. But that's the wonderful thing about memory — it tends to preserve the positive, and turn the negative loose.

By and large, we got our four catalogs a year out on time. At first they were about 32 pages long, and in those days we thought that was a good size. Then they got to be 36 pages, and you know what's happened since. And every time they'd been out a while and we got a line on orders, we'd go over the catalogs page by page to see whether the item paid for the space we'd granted it, or whether it was a loser. (Remember, computers had yet to take their bow in the company!)

Well, as I say, this is the way we were back in those days. At least I remember it this way. Of course, for one who can't remember what he had for lunch by the time 5 p.m. rolls around, this account could be suspect.

I can only say, as a senior citizen, that The Great Timekeeper upstairs seems to gift us old codgers with a delightfully selective memory. He lets us remember the homer we hit in third grade, and lets us forget dropping the pop fly that cost us the Little League title.

Of course, most of you don't know about this. But you'll appreciate it when your time comes!