An enjoyable encounter

As the sending greeting cards dies off, businesses selling cards have reduced, so I normally buy mine now in Myer department store, where they have a decent selection. I went into Myer yesterday to buy a card for my friend's ninetieth birthday and there were only nice 90 year old lady cards. BAD is not a traditional old lady type. I bought a card with roses and a nicely patterned set of tea cups, with the the 90 on the card face. There was nothing else. She probably would have preferred a rude card.

Of course when buying a birthday card, you feel the need for a new winter shirt, as winter is about to end here. Tommy Hilfiger at  half price! 

I recognised the person I paid, an older woman.

She: Are you visiting the city for the weekend?

Me: No, I live in the city, well St Kilda Road.

She: Isn't the street tragic now?

Me: Err, in some ways, yes.

She; All those beautiful old mansions destroyed.

Me: Yes, including the beautiful Illoura.

She: I'm 85 and I began here as seamstress when Myer used to make some of its own clothes.

I was gobsmacked at her age revelation.

 

She: One of the other female staff here used to make deliveries by taxi after work, the taxi paid for by work, and she lived in Beatrice Street, off St Kilda Road and she make sure she was near her flat at the end of her deliveries and be dropped home. Are you near there? 

Me: No, closer to the city. So if you've worked here so long, you must remember Freddie Asmussen?

She: My mother worked here too. We both knew him. 

Me: He was quite a character.

She: Oh yes. In his older years he used to swan around the store with Dame Merlyn. 

I then left her to her job. 

Freddie was an outrageous queen who worked his way up the chain at Myer by his talents and cultivation of his betters. He became Dame Merlyn Myer's favourite and would decorate her mansion for dinners and parties. The (I am sure gay) lads who worked under him were known as Freddie's boys.

Back in the 70s and 80s, if you met a guy for a casual hook up, if asked where you worked, you might have said Myers. 

PS, the store name was changed from Myers to Myer I think some time in the 80s or 90s. 

Australia's Trove has some information about him. 

From a website, 

The windows first began in 1956, created by Freddie Asmussen, who was the head of the display in Myer. Instead of filling the windows with the usual range of gift giving ideas, Asmussen instead decided to showcase something completely different for the Christmas windows. Creating the very first Myer Christmas Windows theme, “Santa and the Olympics”, which celebrated the Olympics, the technological marvel of television, and of course, Santa! Asmussen designed a new Christmas theme every year until his passing in 1974.

And another: 

The hidden saint of Myer's was the late Freddie Asmussen. To call him a window dresser is to say Michelangelo was a ceiling-painter. Freddie, a confirmed bachelor (as they used to say), used the Myer's windows as a series of proscenium arches framing the theatre of his miraculous mind. The Christmas windows were his annual festival, when snow and tinsel and reds and greens and elves and reindeer and Santa manifested themselves in ever-changing combinations that drew people from as far as Upwey or Alamein. At other times, Freddie was only slightly more restrained, allowing himself a few Renaissance touches while avoiding the Rococo.