“Who’s your father?”

It was the shortest job interview I ever had.

Anchorage was a much smaller city in those days. It wasn’t unusual to board a flight to Seattle and know many of your fellow travelers. Everyone seemed to know most everyone.

I was a junior in high school and needed money. I decided to go into every non-bar business on Fourth Avenue and ask for work. I figured sooner or later someone would recognize a real go-getter and make an offer. It happened sooner than expected.

The question came from Harold Koslosky of Koslosky’s Men’s Store. I remember him as being of average height, leaning slightly toward the heavy side, with a swarthy complexion, thick glasses, and wavy, silver hair that gave him a look of distinction.

My mother and father were prominent in elementary education in those days. They were well known, as the children of many of the city’s most influential families were in their care five days a week between the end of August and the beginning of June.

After I answered the question, Harold looked at me for what seemed to be a very long time. Then he asked the second question of the interview.

“Can you be here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning in a suit?”

The interview was over. I had a job. A good job.

The Kosloskys were one of the pioneer families of Anchorage. Ike Koslosky, with his wife Lena, brought Harold, his three brothers and one sister to Anchorage in 1915. It was a city of tents stretching along Ship Creek. All were there because it had been announced that the non-existent town would be the headquarters for construction of the Alaska Railroad.

2,000 people lived in the tents. Ike and his family lived in one and opened a clothing store in another. Ike, and eventually two of his sons, traveled the state buying furs to sell in their store. Business was good. By the time I went to work for Harold, the family owned two men’s stores and a shoe store in Anchorage, and a general store in Palmer.

My second venture into the men’s store business resulted from the Great Alaska Earthquake. Seeing the two owners with their one employee trying to salvage as much of their inventory as they could, I asked Al Kirschbaum, one of the brothers representing the “K” in Seidenverg & K’s, if they needed some help.

I didn’t mean to apply for a job. All of us in high school in those days knew the owners of the men’s stores because we rented our tuxedos from them at prom time and such. And, of course, they knew our fathers. Al asked me if I could meet them at the store the next morning. He didn’t mention the suit. The next morning, much to my surprise, I found myself once again on the payroll of a men’s store. We spent the next several days carrying boxes of suits and shirts, pants, ties, and even hats, from where they were stored in a basement.

That basement was accessed via a long, very steep flight of stairs. We were having several significant aftershocks daily. I can’t tell you how many times we went running up those steps seeking safety as quickly as we could.

I came to understand two important facts about the men’s stores of those days and the people who made them memorable.

First, they could confidently make the kind of judgments as Harold and Al made about me because they were experts at sizing people up. At Koslosky’s, I worked with a man named Henry and a woman named Dixie. Each could determine the size of clothing a man wore simply by watching him walk into the store. I never knew them to be wrong.

Second, was customer service. Consumers today really don’t know what good customer service is. The old-fashioned men’s stores provided service that would shame today’s businesses, even those who brag about how well they treat their customers. When you walked into one of those stores, you were a king. Need a tie in fifteen minutes? No problem. Someone would be soon be knocking on the door of your hotel room with a selection of ties for you.

Your son is dressing for his prom and discovers a stain on his tux shirt? They’ll have a new shirt pressed and ready for him when he stops on his way to pick up his date. He can change in their dressing room.

Need a new suit altered in twenty-four hours for a wedding or funeral? Easy. The seamstress will get right on it.

And each of the people I worked with was a genius at upselling. Buy a suit and be presented with three shirts and five ties that would look good with it. Only a churl could refuse. And anyone overly churlish wouldn’t get the same level of service if they dared visit again.

So what happened to these heroes of free enterprise?

Their goods were of high quality and usually American made. They didn’t come cheap. The big box behemoths, with their buying power in inexpensive, lower quality goods, simply overwhelmed the small, generally family-owned stores.

And then style changed. Teachers and preachers and speakers stopped wearing suits. Yes, there are still stores around that call themselves men’s stores. They do a good job meeting the less formal tastes of the 21st century but they’re not the same. And there are tailors who do good work working mainly on a piece by piece basis.

The days of walking into a store to be approached by Dixie or Henry or Al holding a suit coat and telling you how good you would look wearing it are long gone. I miss those days.

I think when I get dressed tomorrow morning I’ll put on a coat and tie. I might be the only one to see me, but at least in my eyes, I’ll still be a king.

If only for the day.