65 years ago: An epic run on nylons

The ad, published in the Minneapolis Star-Journal, succinctly captured the pent-up demand among ration-weary consumers in the months following the end of World War II.

"This May Please You, But We're Scared," intoned the Dayton Co. on Feb. 5, 1946.

Rightly so. The city's leading department store was heralding its miraculous inventory of 60,000 pairs of nylon stockings, quietly amassed over a three-month period and going on sale the following morning.

Nylons, a relatively new, mass-produced version of the silk stocking, had been absent for most of the war's duration, and they were sorely missed. To avoid a mob scene, the store planned to stretch the sale over a three-day period, selling only 20,000 pairs each day. Cost: $1.15 to $1.65 ($13 to $19 in 2011 dollars).

"All kinds of special preparations were made for what was obviously going to be an unprecedented event," wrote James Grey in "You Can Get it at Dayton's," the florid but fascinating account of the store's history, published in 1962. "Before the stockings were put on sale, packages containing two pairs each -- the limit to a customer -- were made up and put in the sub-basement fur vaults for safekeeping.

It was planned that customers would be admitted by the Eighth Street door, carried by elevator to the third floor and then into a queue that made its way by escalator down to the second floor.

"There the line would wind through the toy department, the boys' and men's wear departments and the yard goods, coming at last to the cashiers' windows where their money was to be received in advance. With a receipt in hand, the customer would continue her journey to the counters where she would find what she was looking for -- the stockings, stacked by sizes and by price. Having received her merchandise, it was hoped that she would go home to gloat quietly over her achievement."

The store's hosiery buyer -- identity unknown -- told the Minneapolis Morning Tribune that he hoped that the inventory would last through each of the three days, "but you just can't tell with women," he said.

Despite reports of fainting (the afflicted were reportedly carried to the store's children's barbershop to recover), 88 salespeople processed the first 1,000 customers before 10 a.m. By noon, all of the day's allotment had been sold; the following two days were also quick sellouts.

"[The sale] wrote a dramatic page into the record of the social history of the community as seen from behind the department store counter," wrote Grey.

The whole town was certainly talking. Cedric Adams, the Star-Journal's star columnist, chimed in with a dispatch titled, "Notes From a Nylon Line." The rumor that a customer had given birth while waiting in line was just that, he wrote, "but it is true that when one woman made the remark that she didn't know whether to get in line or not because she had 15 pairs of nylons at home, the women next to her hauled off and let her have a sock right in the eye," he wrote. "Both women were taken away." Adams also noted that "60 women lost single rubbers, one with a shoe still in it."

Not everyone found humor in the spectacle. Capt. Walter A. Lunden of Minneapolis shared his disgust in a letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, published a few days after the sale. Lunden was on leave from his post as director of prisons for the eastern military district in Allied-occupied Germany.

As if on cue, the store ran a terse seven-word ad in the Star-Journal on the sale's final day: "No hosiery will be sold on Saturday."

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757