Feb

6

Woolworth

February 6, 2022 |

Woolworth: it brought back many useful highlights of my life when I read Dr. Brett's story "I am Woolworth" [Ed: see page 45 in The Psychology of Trading]. here was a patient who thought he was Woolworth despite the modern world. He lives in a different reality just like we often find ourselves completely out of touch with market gyrations and can't understand why. The sage and Charlie Munger exemplify this best as they persist in saying Crypto is worth nothing and will eventually go to zero because it doesn't produce anything like a farm.

Woolworth was started in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, PA, the home of great entrepreneurs like Carnegie and Frank Woolworth. I worked there for two years as Tennis Instructor at the Valley Club. I visited the site of the first Woolworth store there but was too immature to appreciate it. Even then, there was a tremendous entrepreneurial spirit in the city and I still marvel at all the great, creative, dynamic entrepreneurs I met there. strangely many of these entrepreneurs were in the shoe business and while Woolworth went for the 5-and-10 business after 10 years and kept its one successful business as Foot Locker, the shoe entrepreneurs in Wilkes-Barre tended to fail. My first contact with Woolworth was when I was 12 and after school each day i would ride a trolley.

retailing then and now was such that no customer liked to walk more than 500 feet. My Woolworth I used to buy a 19 cent banana split every day after school. The lunch counters at W. were the site of local daily meetings and one of their most popular features.

There was great nostalgia when W closed its 900 5-and-10 stores after 100 years in 1987. "Where else could you buy such nick-nacks as a 37 cent diamond engagement ring?" I got engaged to my wife of some 50 years there, when I bought her that diamond ring at W. She still wears that ring and if she's in a expansive mood, she will send a picture of it to this site.

after splurging on the 37 cent diamond ring, i had to economize with a root beer float for 10 cents along with the grilled cheese sandwich.

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