The Hub Fashions

In Slayton, Minnesota, there’s one street (Broadway) that’s the downtown, merchant strip. On it, there’s a clothing store called The Hub. (Because, you see, Slayton is the county seat of Murray County, and is the ‘hub’ of a wheel connecting the towns of Pipestone, Worthington, and Sioux Falls. Woo hoo, right?)

The owner of this store is a man named Wayne who’s always been a little odd. (“He doesn’t socialize,” says my great aunt, which can be a serious problem. If you’re not in church regularly, how do people know anything about you?) Wayne’s wife was the main person that ran it, and she got sick several years ago. The store closed for years, all its stock still sitting on the racks. This past winter, Wayne’s wife died, and he is now selling the store, as well as everything in it. Everything in the store.

We went and looked around, and it was quite an experience. First off, every last piece of inventory is minimum fifteen years old. The air is filled with dust and the scent of decades-old linen. My mom finds a jacket identical to one she bought when I was in middle school. The same fabric used on my 40-year-old cousin’s prom dress is in the fabric section, $1.37 a yard. Uncle-Jesse-style denim jackets hang on the racks, turning brown with age. Manequin pieces fill the window, my mother buys a torso and a foot to try some art with. Not only that, but bottles of herbal supplements are on a shelf, homeopathic bottles and vials, covered in dust, now 20% off!

Even though the ancient dresses and coats are marked $65, Wayne comes over and says “Tempt yourself!” everything’s marked down to five dollars, so buy as much as you want!

A fairly young man in an old Mercedes convertible is carefully trying on tuxedo shoes, trying to get a perfect fit. The shoes cost five dollars, so he could just buy three pairs and throw two away, but no, this must be done right. Wayne bows and scrapes for him, everything needs to be out of here by October, and from the looks of it, $5 could be a quarter of the day’s sales.