Browsing the Memory Department

In the old days at the Bullocks Wilshire department store, customers weren't customers. They were patrons. Women were ladies. And every sales check was handwritten, in order to prevent the ding of cash registers from disturbing the patrons.

"At other stores, you could use" cash registers, said Patricia Brown Thomson, who worked for the department store from 1950 to 1960. "But not at Bullocks Wilshire."

Thomson returned to the department store Saturday for a rare glimpse inside and a trip down memory lane. The terra cotta and tile building, now used by Southwestern University School of Law as a library, is opened to the public once a year for a day of tours and lunch in the famous Tea Room.

While the tours attracted people interested in the building, its history and a chance to once again munch on coconut cream pie in the pastel-colored Tea Room, they also drew a group of loyal former employees who were brimming with stories of the old days, when movie stars roamed the store and young women modeled the latest fashions during lunch and tea.

Some of those former tea models, as they were known, were on hand Saturday, women in their 60s, 70s and 80s, their figures and posture still hinting at their former profession even after all these years. They greeted one another -- and the assembled former buyers and salespeople -- with hugs and squeals.

"You're Joan Dineen," Thomson said to a trim woman wearing a blue pantsuit and gold jewelry, who admitted that, yes, she was Joan -- although now she goes by Joan Mitchell.

"Holy Toledo," said Thomson's husband, Ron. "You haven't changed a bit."

Patricia Thomson sighed. "Those were the days."

From the moment that the women stepped inside the old department store, though, hugs gave way to floods of memories -- and sometimes, tears.

Standing inside the building's former Saddle Shop, where patrons once used a life-size plaster horse known as Bullocks Barney to test out new saddles, Mitchell told of her first fashion show, in 1947. She and the other models wore riding clothes, "from casual to sidesaddle. It was fabulous," she said. "We wore top hats and veils

Ivana Mooney, a former head model who worked at the department store from 1964 to 1978, told of another fashion show in which she and others wore crowns with lighted candles as they traipsed down the runway.

"They had the Fire Department waiting outside," Mooney said. "I don't know how we did it. We just did it."