In late 1960, while I was going to Portland State College (it didn’t become a university until 1969), I went to work for Montgomery Ward Department Store. At that time, it was still a competitor of Sears Roebuck and sold most everything imaginable.

I was assigned to work in their retail store warehouse, which was a block away from the store. The building was about one block square and two stories tall with a basement. The main and second floors were worn wood and it had a freight elevator in the center that could open front and back. There was no forklift, so everything was handled by hand or with a hand truck.

I worked Mondays and Fridays from the middle of the afternoon until 9pm. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I worked four hours in the afternoon, and on Saturdays I worked all day. There were two fulltime employees who also worked there 8am to 5pm, five days a week.

Our jobs consisted of receiving inventory shipments, storing them in their proper locations for later retrieval, and delivering items to customers who had purchased them at the store and were sent to the warehouse for pickup. Everything in the warehouse came from the manufacturers in packaging of some sort, and all heavy items were in sturdy cardboard boxes. 

Because of space limitations, we stacked everything we could two or three high and with no forklift that meant learning to stack and unstack by hand. Two people would do the stacking but I had to learn to unstack them by myself. That was fun with stoves, refrigerators, and large electronic items. 

Additionally, my job was to sweep the floors every day I worked. If I worked at it and wasn’t interrupted, I could get it done in about two hours.

On Mondays and Fridays, I was the only person in the warehouse after 5 so I had to be able to handle anything by myself when a customer came to get what they had purchased. With no fork lift I became good at handling all appliances, mattress, large industrial equipment tires, stereo consoles, television stereo combinations, and everything else the store sold. 

I also had to help the customers load their items in or on their vehicles. Very few showed up with any type of truck so I got pretty good at stuffing things into backseats and car trunks, and tying mattresses on top with twine. 

For my efforts I was paid $1.80 per hour. That made it possible for me to purchase a Triumph TR4 as well as pay for school and have an active social life. Those were the days.

Ken Kaiyala
11-16-2025