Compared to other Saturday afternoons at Warshawsky’s, this probably is a slow one. Two of the four or five cashier lines are unoccupied, and the large sales space in front of the counter is wide open. At least half the customers are being helped. Others are standing around the fringes, looking bored, waiting for their numbers to be called.
“I already called 43.”
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For more than 75 years, Warshawsky’s, at 1916 S. State, has attracted huge numbers of back-alley mechanics, do-it-yourselfers, hot-rodders, four-wheelers, and the occasional professional wrench. They come from all over, from the south side to the North Shore, shopping for everything from fenders to floor mats.
The other part of Warshawsky’s business, meanwhile, comes from out of town. The store’s 200-plus-page catalog, jammed with fine-print product descriptions, is known nationwide. The catalog’s cover depicts Warshawsky’s as a modern kind of art-deco building backed by a blue sky and surrounded by open space. Car enthusiasts arriving from other cities are sometimes disappointed; it’s an aging building in a crumbling part of town.
A small woman is rooting through the rubble for a particular kind of floor mat. She finds it and heaves it into a shopping cart ten feet away containing two other identical mats, then continues to search for another.
