CHICAGO — Sears recently announced that it had “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business. The company has been declining for almost half a century, but that was still a jolt: I grew up in rural Kansas in the 1950s, and Sears was part of my life, as it was for most people in small towns.
Although the company had stores all over America, they were in the big cities and towns. We went only once to the Kansas City store, when I was about 6, when a neighbor drove us there to shop for bedding — my parents didn't learn to drive until some years later.
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