Northpark Memories: Reflections From A Young Employee

I just can't help it. To this day, I still get nostalgic walking into and inside our Northpark Mall. Perhaps part of the reason is because I was there at the very beginning--or close enough to it.

It was 33 years ago this month when yours truly took a job at Camelot Music on the lower level of Northpark, where FYE is housed today. My boss was a pretty well known bass player here in town, Rex Romagnolo, who I had befriended as a younger man when Rex had played in a band called Miss'sippi that my brother worked for in the late 70s. Rex was a great guy to have as a manager and we remain Facebook friends today. My first job had been at the Camelot Music store in Metrocenter Mall in South Jackson in the early 80s. In the fall of 1984, Metro still reigned as retail king in the Metro and Northpark was--well--let's say pretty quiet. The joke among me and my co-workers was that tumbleweed constantly blew through the facility it was so, uh, "under-shopped." Compared to the hustle and bustle of my Camelot Music days at Metro, the Northpark experience--initially--required a lot of coffee from the Chick-Fil-A located upstairs on the second level. Northpark, built by Cadillac Fairview, opened in 1984 with four anchors — Jackson-based McRae's, Gayfers, D.H. Holmes, and JCPenney. Northpark also had the cinema located in the back of the mall, originally a 10-screen operation, which later expanded to a 14-screen state-of-the-art setup under Regal Entertainment Group's United Artists Theatres brand. And even though it was slow going at first, shoppers eventually began finding us and personal memories started getting made. Wilson Wong had his House Of Wong restaurant which served Carlsberg beer that I and my mall friends would secretly partake of during our lunch breaks every now and then (sorry, Rex!). There was a food court, but it was on the second floor. I can't remember all of the eateries located in the court but I know there was a Dairy Queen and a place called Bert's that specialized in grilling quick steaks (!)--I was never brave enough to find out if they were any good or not. Sbarro's was still there, even then, and there was a Karmelkorn--a staple of ALL malls in the 70s and 80s--located further down the second floor and, of course, Spencer's Gifts had a store at Northpark. I believe there was also an arcade, even though I never played video games. This was the early 80s, though--there HAD to have been an arcade! My girlfriend (and true first love) Liz, conveniently worked downstairs at McRae's in the Juniors Department so we saw a lot of each other. I was living at the time in a rental apartment in Raymond, MS off-campus at Hinds Junior College where I was studying philosophy under my great mentor (and later my greater friend) the late David Mangum and taking Advanced Creative Writing under Retta Porter, another special friend, may she rest in peace. It was a long drive from Raymond to Ridgeland but as a 19 year-old kid I thought nothing about it. In retrospect, I should have: why I never broke down after closing at 10 pm or so while making that long haul back home to Raymond in my first car, a 1976 Pontiac LeMans I affectionately referred to as "The Dustmobile", is beyond me. No cell phones, no GPS. Just hop in and gun it down 1-220. That's what I did, devil take the hindmost. I recall one particular night in the winter of '84, after we closed down, when a few of us considered driving down to the Superdome in New Orleans to catch the Prince concert everybody was talking about. But Ridgeland was under a freeze warning and reports were that driving was hazardous. Still, somehow, The Dustmobile and I made it okay back to Raymond slip sliding away in the dark--even though, regrettably, we all did miss Prince. While at Camelot in Northpark one of the first mega-selling CDs of all time came out: Dire Straits "Brothers In Arms." In fact, we carried few CDS at the time. Vinyl was still king back then and we had a rack of 45 rpms, too. It was also while I was working there that a former young model named Whitney Houston released her first album. I remember digging most of it. If only any of us knew what that young woman would bring to the world of popular music... Sandra Rives Monohan, now with the City of Ridgeland, came to work for us in the summer of '85 and we had so many laughs together goofing on customers and making up our own lyrics to hit songs of the day--especially the ones we didn't like. I can't remember if Sandra was there on that historic Saturday in July of 1985--just a few days shy of my 20th birthday--when the rock fundraiser "Live Aid" kicked off and Rex set up a little black and white television in the back room where we would slip in and out between customers to go watch music and philanthropic history being made. Later that night, after closing, a few of us guys grabbed a couple of six packs at the Eckerd's Drugstore located on the lower level of the Mall, climbed in the back of Bert Scott's pick-up truck, and turned up the live simulcast of the concert as loud as it could go right when Led Zeppelin--with Phil Collins on drums--performed a version of "Stairway To Heaven." We sat in that truck, silently drinking our beer, looking up at the clear, starry summer sky really feeling "all that glitters is gold." It sure was that night. So many other great memories come back to me of those days at Northpark: Liz and I sharing sweet lunches together and sneaking off in isolated places to steal kisses; my aforementioned Hinds philosophy teacher coming up one cold night just to purchase a copy of Thomas McGuane's novel "Nobody's Angel" for me at B. Dalton Bookstore upstairs; the pranks my co-workers and I would play on each other in Camelot hoping Rex wouldn't be the wiser--the list goes on and on. Maybe I'm just sentimental but I still think of those things when I go into Northpark today. All of those old stores are gone now, though, and I'm not sure if the 19 year-old Jack Criss would recognize today's version of the Mall. But every now and then I believe I can catch a whiff of that cheese popcorn from Karamelkorn or of Liz's perfume. Or Whitney Houston will come on over a store's music system and I think of that new album from that unknown young woman. Or I hear David Mangum, impatient customer, standing much too long at the register waiting to buy my book bellowing out in that bass voice of his, "Hey! Do you sell books here?!" Great times. Great memories. Northpark Mall in Ridgeland will always remain an integral and important part of my youth. I'm sure some young worker there today will think the same thing 33 years from now. What does the old song say? "They can't take that from me?" Nope--they truly can't. And I'd never want them to anyway.