Where Mansfield styles began.

Sannie's clothing store in Mansfield in 1975, 40 years after its founding.

My most recent post on this blog elicited a fairly good response from its readers, at least as far as I can tell from the number of looks it got according to the little meter that appears on the left-hand side of the browser version. That was heartening, given that I post a lot less frequently than I used to.

The meter doesn't give me the demographics of the reading audience, but I have to believe they're usually in the 40-70 range, age-wise -- especially when the posts refer to something that hasn't been a part of the Mansfield landscape for more than 30 years.

My last post, if you didn't read it, was about my having to retire a well-worn pair of pants, and how that reminded me of a little two-line classified ad that used to run in the weekly Mansfield News (itself no longer in existence) touting the quality of the pants sold at my father's downtown clothing store.

Over the many years I've been involved in local journalism, I've had the infrequent occasion to mention that store, which closed in 1992, in opinion pieces or other retrospective pieces. The store was named "Sannie's," after the eldest brother of the four sons born to Carmelo and Gandolfa Farinella, formerly of Palermo, Sicily. My uncle, Santino (yes, like Sonny Corleone), left the family bakery and founded the clothing store on North Main Street in 1935, and was gradually joined in the venture by brothers Frank, Tony (my father) and Charlie.

The Wasserman Block in 1955, two years before Sannie's expanded.

Originally just a single storefront in a building originally built in the 1800s as a livery stable, Sannie's gradually expanded to take over a whole series of stores in what was then called the Wasserman Block. First came a small adjacent shop for ladies' wear, then in 1957, a major expansion encompassing the entire Wasserman Block, which was gutted and rebuilt as one large storefront connected to the original building. The store was expanded or reconfigured several more times in the decades that followed, including the purchase of an adjacent bicycle shop that was repurposed as "Sannie's Little World," devoted to infants' and toddlers' wear and other related products.

Inside the pre-1957 Sannie's display area.

The store did a hell of a business for many years -- so well, in fact, that I live comfortably off an inheritance that sustained my mother for 14 years after her husband's death in 2001, and so far, another eight for me after her passing. Sannie's probably would have survived longer than it did if not for changing business conditions brought about by the opening of a local megamall (Emerald Square in North Attleboro) in 1989, and the advancing age of the surviving founding family members.

Strange it is, indeed, to see Emerald Square on the verge of collapse here in 2023 because of the advent and popularity of online shopping.

I guess the secret of Sannie's success during its heyday was that it provided a ready-made clientele what it needed the most -- the basics, every-day goods that met a family's daily needs, not far from home and in a pleasant shopping environment, and at reasonable prices. Sannie's was where you shopped for school clothes, or a good pair of jeans, or underwear or socks, or casual wear for all ages made by companies you knew and trusted.

The four Farinella brothers (Charlie, Frank, Sannie, Tony) in 1958.

The secret to that was some shrewd buying tactics by my father and his brothers. They would scour the wholesalers for big-brand closeouts, styles that were discontinued or about to be, and they'd load up on them and sell them for very attractive prices -- often much less than the big-name retailers such as Jordan Marsh or Filene's. You want Levi's? You could go to the big stores and pay a lot for them, or you could go to Sannie's and not notice the few stitches that weren't in the same place as the newer products and come away with a great pair of jeans and a few extra bucks still in your pocket.

These weren't damaged goods, either. This wasn't a Building 19 or Ocean State Job Lot. These jeans didn't fall off a freight train and then get shipped to an outlet store for quick sale, and let the buyer beware. I wore Izod Lacoste polo shirts from Sannie's that were every bit as good as what was on sale at Jordan Marsh, even if they were no longer current offerings from the manufacturer. Nobody knew the difference.

Hence was the genesis of one of the opportunities for my peers to tease me in my youth, however.

Not long after the opening of the store and the purchase of the original three-story building at 310 North Main Street, my uncle Sannie decided to buy a big neon sign for the store. It was a tall, vertical sign -- an estimated 18 feet in height, maybe a little more -- that spelled out the store's name one letter at a time from top to bottom. At the base of the sign were the words "Wearing Apparel" in neon script, and there was still room enough for one more line of print without the neon, so the brothers chose "Where Mansfield Styles Begin" as the slogan.

At the time of my entering high school in 1968, Mansfield was a town of barely 5,000 residents, and the "Where Mansfield Styles Begin" slogan became somewhat of a joke. The comedians would add, "... and End" to the phrase. Others would note that Mansfield had no style at all (although their mothers would dress them in Sannie's clothing from head to toe). So the saying on the sign was eventually changed to "Your Brand Name Store," which was inoffensive and accurate.

That sign shined brightly in the town for nearly 50 years, even more prominently when it was hoisted onto a pole anchored at the farthest north corner of the expanded store. Indeed, it could be seen from miles away under the right circumstances. On Route 106 heading east from Plainville to Mansfield, there was a higher-elevation point right at the Foxboro town line where at night, you could see the lights of the sign in the distance, probably about two miles away. It was like a welcome-home beacon to me on long nights spent at the newspaper in my early years of employment.

Sadly, a few years ago someone told me that they discovered the rusted remains of that sign in a landfill on Cape Cod. How it got there, no one knows. I had always hoped it would have gone to a neon graveyard like the ones in Las Vegas, but no such luck.

The expanded Sannie's in 1975. The famous ramp is at far right.

Of course, people my age (now teetering upon 70) remember the store quite well. Even my friends with 1970s or 1980s birthdates have memories of the store -- most of them of running up and down the ramp that joined the original building and its higher foundation to the reconstructed Wasserman Block area. As a child, it probably seemed like Mount Everest, but it was good, clean fun -- unless they somehow commandeered a shopping cart and made the downhill run on wheels. My father made many sprints from his office at the back of the store to the base of the ramp to catch would-be Evel Knievels before they collided with display tables or other shoppers.

Portrait of the author as a young man.

I have many fond memories of Sannie's -- not just as a young tyke, but also in my young adult years when I lived next door to it, in an old white house at 8-10 Thomas St. that had been built in the late 1800s by one of the original magnates of the Attleboro jewelry industry, a man named Doliver Spaulding. That giant three-story structure was moved intact in the late 1990s to a new location on Pratt Street, but it served as my home for 14 years under the family's ownership. I parked my car in the store lot at night and often stopped by to chat with my father or to flirt with the store's young female part-time help.

By the way, that old house is on the state's registry of historic buildings -- but unfortunately, not as recognition for my long residence within it.

As close as I was to Sannie's and as fond as I am of my memories of it, I own a distinction not shared by any of my first cousins. Of all of the offspring of the four Farinella brothers, I believe I am the only one among them who never worked at the store in any capacity. When I became of age to look for part-time employment in high school, and with an interest in writing already evident, I got a job writing sports for the local weekly paper.

As I was an only child, I think my father was a little disappointed at first that I had no interest in working at the store. But after he read the first article I wrote for the Mansfield News in the fall of 1968, any disappointment he may have felt quickly disappeared. He was my biggest fan until the day he died, which was on June 9, 2001.

As the photo at the bottom of this post illustrates, Sannie's is now just a fading memory to Mansfieldians. My Uncle Frank retired early due to health issues, then Uncle Sannie died of cancer in 1980. My father and his much-younger brother Charlie continued to labor on for 12 more years, and Charlie's son James came on board toward the end, but times had changed and shoppers were dazzled by the shiny new things opening elsewhere. What had been a staple of Mansfield shoppers for almost seven decades was now an afterthought. The decision was made in April 1992 to close the doors and to sell off everything -- even the shopping carts, one of which sits in my backyard shed.

Demolition of the block begins in 2019.

Upon the store's closing, the property was purchased by a local developer and converted into a mini-mall of sorts, with the spacious interior converted into multiple stores and a diner -- the latter of which seemed to have ventilation problems that caused its patrons' clothing to smell like bacon for hours afterward. Then the entire corner of the block was sold to another developer, and the whole area was leveled in 2019 to make way for a giant apartment complex. We have a lot of those in Mansfield these days, many near the train station along the main Boston-Providence corridor, with more to come. "Location, location, location," as they say.

It does make me wonder what might have happened if my father and his brothers had gone through with plans to purchase a parcel of land at the intersection of US 1 and Route 152 in Plainville before they bought the Wasserman Block, and had moved their store there instead. For a latter-day reference, the lot is where the huge Lowe's is now. Would my family have moved as well? Would I have gone to King Philip Regional High? Would I be even more of a "homer" on my KP sports broadcasts than I already am?

One can only speculate about lives not lived. But every time I drive down North Main Street and see that huge apartment complex at the corner instead of the yellow cinder-block façade of the family store, I wonder. Those thoughts also engage when I pull into my driveway, as I managed to save one of those cinder blocks from the wrecking ball in 2019, placing it upon a retaining wall next to my front door.

Yes, we all got good laughs out of "Where Mansfield Styles Begin" and "Pants That Wear." But my family got a good life from it as well, and that's worthy of a lot of respect. I don't mind singing its praise more than 30 years since it became simply another part of Mansfield history.

The new apartment/retail complex where Sannie's once stood.