Saturday Busiest Day For Shops In Seattle

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30957, 13 January 1966, Page 2

Saturday Busiest Day For Shops In Seattle

An American woman visiting Christchurch was amazed to learn that New Zealand retail shops were closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

“There would be a revolution if merchants had to close down at home. Saturday is the biggest business day of the week,” said Mrs Frances Casanova, a librarian, of Seattle.

Revolving shifts and days off ensured that no-one worked more than eight hours a day and 40 hours a week, she said

This system meant that: workers had one free day a! week to do their shopping in- 1 stead of having to rush about during lunch hours to buy I supplies. Parking problems in the city meant that many people preferred to shop at the large shopping centres in the suburbs, said Mrs Casanova. She herself lives nine miles from the Seattle Public Library where she works and likes to shop at the centre near her home. “It has more than 100 shops and its own hospital,” said Mrs Casanova. Parking Pinch

Unless it was unavoidable no-one drove to work. Even so. Seattle is faced with a

i major parking problem and Sparking space was at a premium.

| “The city merchants are i feeling the pinch and offer inIducements such as bargains Ito get people back to their ishops. There has been talk about establishing pedestrian ‘shopping places but nothing >has been done,” she said, [“and people still shop out of town.”

The building of parking | blocks was in the hands of I private enterprise. Recently I the hotels found they were: losing business to motels sot they started buying nearby! buildings for parking or else] (building parking blocks, she! said. Although the population of! Seattle excluding the suburbs! lis only about 600,000, the traffic problem is made more! acute by the fact that Seattle' is an industrial centre —the; Boeing Company builds aircraft there, and it is the home [ of steel and shipbuilding industries —as well as a busy port. It also has an international airport and is on a ! (main route to Canada. , To make matters worse the icity is sandwiched between | the sea and a lake. It can (only expand to the north and ’the south. As Seattle expands the traffic problem increases. In recent years Seattle’s ’Negro population has also increased and is now about 10 per cent of the total. Mrs Casanova said Negroes had been well-treated in Seattle but the whites were aware of ■ a problem. “But the less said about it the better,” she said. ; In common with other libI rarians, Mrs Casanova has (found that television has I stimulated reading. The ! Seattle Public Library and its ! branches houses more than I two million volumes and this I number is growing.

Mrs Casanova finds she has little spare time. She works in the literature, philosophy and religion department and said the staff had the job of reading the new novels in their spare time. “We write reviews w’hich (go before the library book committee which decides whether to buy the books. If | there are any controversial i books they are read by more (than one person so that an j objective assessment can be i made.” Famous Lover I As far as she knows, Mrs I Casanova has no connexion (with the famous lover. But ishe does get many comments on her name. “When my husband was alive he came in for i a lot of kidding,” she i laughed. I However, Mrs Casanova can j trace her ancestry back to the I thirteenth century. Before I her marriage she was a Shel(don. “The Sheldons came to (America in 1640,” said Mrs ! Casanova. A book has been j published about the family.

She is not a member of ‘The Daughters of the Revolution” however—the Sheldons fought with the British.