The Sears and Roebuck Company is founded in Chicago in 1888. It's first product sold is watches. The company becomes famous for its mail order catalog, introduced in 1893,

where one can buy anything from rifles to automobile and house building kits. Famously, once a family finished with the catalog, it often ended up in the outhouse where it was used for toilet paper.
My own great grandfather, Alvaro Krotz, invented one of the first automobiles that was sold through Sears and Roebuck as the Motor Buggy.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the company identified a new market and began to offer its Sears and Roebuck Charm School. They probably had never seen a girl like me coming. Between 1963 and 1972, more than 100,000 charmers graduate from this program. This is by far the most concerted effort to get my tomboy traits under control. I am too young to appreciate the irony of the name, but at 13-years-old, I’m anxious to know how to prepare for the years to come. For nine weeks, I dress in a skirt and blouse and go on Saturday mornings to the Sears and Roebuck in Washington, D.C. on Wisconsin Avenue.
When I arrive, I go to a room on the second floor. It is set up with folding chairs, a chalkboard and somewhat battered desks, like those we have at school. There are about 10 other girls there, ranging in age from 12 to 16. The glamorous instructor is petite with blonde hair worn in a bob. She wears a crisp beige linen dress with a tasteful rhinestone brooch and short white gloves. She passes out three-ring binders that contain the maps to our new lives.
I learn how to dress, according to the latest Sears’ styles appropriate to my age, and what gloves to wear when. I can’t help but stifle a snort when I think of my life in Cabin John. I’d better be careful talking about this at home, or my brothers will howl. We study how to determine the best colors for ourselves by throwing different colored scarves over our shoulders, and how to wear scarves. We practice walking, first with a book on our heads. This proved a disconcerting challenge for me. Second, and by far easier, we adopt a looser style alternating legs and arms: left foot with right arm, right foot with left arm. We sip daintily from tea cups without making slurping noises. This is among the hard ones for me, given my roots.

An ad for the Charm School.
Sears and Roebucks thinks of everything. In the future, I’ll know how to treat a boyfriend right. I’ll be able to determine the shape of my face with a bar of soap and a mirror. You look in the mirror then take the soap and trace around the reflection of your face. This apparently is de rigueur if you want to pick the right hairdo and makeup.[1]
The teacher shows us how to sit properly, not with legs crossed at the knee, but at the ankles. I think of myself sitting cross legged in the grass by the river. We rehearse how to make introductions, how to use cutlery and how to set the table correctly. Hmmmmm. This doesn’t look much like our place settings at home. There’s a class on make-up. I only wear a small amount of pink lipstick. But after this class, I adopt a thin blue line of Yardley eyeliner. All I remember really is never to pluck more than three eyebrow hairs at a time. And never pluck a hair above the eyebrow. Huh?
At the end of each class, I run across Wisconsin Avenue in a most unladylike manner to go to the Waffle House, where I indulge in chocolate milkshakes, burgers and fries until I’m picked up.
[1] Elaine Bennet, The Creative Café. 1/24/2018
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