In the last episode about my early life in Napa, during WW II, I wrote about my first real job.

At age 13, I had successfully, in my first attempt, landed a job that actually paid money -- not much, but, to a 13-year-old who had never drawn a wage before, it seemed like a lot.

Through a chance encounter at just the right time with Mr. Mervin Lash, the manager of Carithers Department Store in Napa, I was hired as the janitor and shipping and receiving clerk. The job paid 50 cents an hour, I got a 10 percent employee discount on any merchandise I might purchase and they worked around my split-shift junior high school hours.

The family that owned the store lived in Santa Rosa, where they had a second department store by the name of Crowley's.

Carithers was the major tenant in the old Behlow Building, a stone edifice that had withstood the 1906 San Francisco earthquake with little damage while some of its neighbors did not fare so well. It was located at the corner of Second and Brown streets, across from what is now called Napa's historic courthouse.

On that particular intersection was Carithers, the courthouse, the Plaza Hotel and Maggetti's Drug Store, which was tucked into a corner of the Bank of America building (now a Wells Fargo branch).

Carithers sold quality ladies', men's and children's ready-to-wear clothing as well as cosmetics and ladies' foundations (corsets and bras). It did not sell shoes (which were readily available across Brown Street at Keig's Shoe Store). Carithers had three floors of merchandise -- the basement, street level and mezzanine. Even with a lot of the shortages caused by the war, it was well stocked.

Of special interest to me was the men's department, managed by a Mr. Heath, who was a nice older gentleman. He was assisted by a very nice sales lady by the name of Mrs. Bumpurs. She was special because, I, as a teenager, had become interested in clothes. I remember when men's winter overcoats were popular with the high school crowd and I spent a good portion of a couple paychecks on a nice overcoat. I wore it to school the first day I owned it and (naturally) I got too hot wearing it, so I hung it up on a hook in the hall of school. It was gone within 15 minutes and I never got it back.

One of the items that I was especially interested in was Levi's jeans. They were the real item for the teenage crowd. Because of the war effort, the maker of Levi's had to devote most of its production to items for the military. As a result, the making of jeans was secondary and they were hard to come by.

Since I was the shipping and receiving clerk, I knew when Levi's arrived -- and they only came in a few pairs at a time. I would deliver them to Mrs. Bumpurs and she would let me know when they were put on the shelf for sale. I was usually the first one in line for them. My classmates at school were very envious. (Levi's were then $2.25 a pair.)

Carithers' closest competition downtown was Albert's Department Store. It was on First Street and occupied a lot of the area where the open square is now, on the First Street side of Mervyn's, the site of the old clock tower. Albert's had inventory very similar to Carithers.

Albert's was owned by the Grossman family of Napa. It's interesting that Rosalyn Grossman, a daughter of the owners and a graduate of Napa High School a few years ahead of me, married Mervin Morris, the founder of Mervyn's Department Stores. Coincidentally, the old Albert's Department Store site became the site for a Mervyn's Department Store.

Other stores in the area at the time that sold similar merchandise were Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney's.

Montgomery Ward was a full-service store n the corner of Second and Coombs Streets, an area now occupied by a parking lot. Penney's was on First Street about where the (now closed) Merrill's Drug Store is located.

During the post-WW II era, both Montgomery Ward and Penney's moved to new locations. Montgomery Ward became the anchor tenant at the new Bel Aire Shopping Center on Trancas and the Freeway. A new Target store now occupies the site.

Meanwhile Penney's just moved a little over a block down First Street, corner of Franklin, where there is now a big hole in the ground pending development of a hotel.

The Behlow Building, which housed Carithers and the old Albert's building, along with a lot of the other old beautiful stone buildings of the early 20th century (and before), were victims of redevelopment and torn down in the early 1970s.

("Napa As It Was" appears every other Monday, sharing this space with Betty Rhodes' "Senior Corner.")