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Dear Reader(s):

"Easy credit, easy credit,
Wilkin's is the place where you can get it!"

This rhymed cuplet was the refrain sung by the Wilkin's Jeweler's Easy Credit Gals. They were my first fantasy love. They dressed in fringed cowgirl outfits and sang sweetly on local television (was there any other kind) about the attractions of Wilkin's Jewelers, which was, I believe, located on Penn Avenue (or maybe Liberty) in the heart of East Liberty, or 'Sliberty, as it was more popularly known. Did you know that in its heyday,'Sliberty was the second largest shopping area in Western Pennsylvania next to downtown Pittsburgh? You wouldn't know it to look at it now. It makes bombed out Bagdad look like Beverly Hills.

I remember as a kid of nine or ten going to Wilkin's Jewelers one sunny Saturday afternoon when the store was having a special sale to look for the Easy Credit Gals, who were appearing in person. My dream girls! I had a severe crush on all of them. I took my autograph book (which contained signatures from Roberto Clemente, Frank Tavares, Rocky Nelson, Gino Cimoli, Don Hoak, Smokey Burgess, Joe Gibbon, Bob "Dog" Skinner, Harvey Haddix, Clem Labine, "Maz", The Deacon, Bob Moose, and who knows who else, since the book is long gone, inadvertently tossed out by my mother many years back, along with a complete set of Topps baseball cards from 1958, the only complete set I ever had, 454 cards, I think it was, but I wouldn't stake my life on that number).

There they were, the Pittsburgh C&W version of the McGuire Sisters, in front of the store, in their short cowgirl skirts and white cowgirl boots and hats, sitting on high stools, signing autographs. A little sliver of thigh showed on one of the gals. They looked a lot younger in person than they did on my family's scratchy 13-inch black and white t.v. They could have been my baby-sitters.

There was a long line for autographs, and it must have taken a half-hour to get to the front. The gal in the middle--I think her name was Dolores, but I may be making this up--said, "Who should I make it to, hon?"

I wanted to say, to your secret admirer, your future husband, to the one who thinks of you when he kisses his pillow, to the one who gets an instant chubby when he thinks of you, but all I could barely stammer out, "Marc." She signed it, "To Mark, from the E-Z Credit Gals." Then she said, "Next."

And that was it. I walked away, deflated and broken-hearted. Isn't that always the way with the pretty girls?
posted by marc at Thursday, September 25, 2003