LEWISTON — In the days when Lewiston’s mills boomed and folks crowded Lisbon Street’s sidewalks, Gilda Dennis dropped out of Lewiston High and lied about her age to get a job paying just $12.50 per week.

Ten dollars would go to her mother, who needed the income to keep her family afloat. The rest would allow her to buy clothes once in a while.

“I needed to do it,” said Dennis, now 93. She went to work full time at Woolworth’s five and dime. It was either there or work in a textile mill or shoe shop. “I didn’t have a choice.” She holds no bitterness, though, for her employer.

All these years later, she treasures the memories.

“I loved being with the people,” Dennis said. “That was the best part.”

And she’s not alone.

On Wednesday, about 30 people who worked at the long-gone downtown stores — from Woolworth, J.J. Newberry, Kresge and Peck’s — gathered for a lunchtime reunion. They talked about their days as teenage workers, about their home lives at the time and what it was like to be part of the once-bustling downtown.

Georgette Sampson said she went to work at Newberry’s as a way to have spending money for a movie or for a soda at one of the fountains that seemed to exist in every one of the stores.

Like Dennis, she also lied about her age to start working at 15. She earned 35 cents an hour, often making the sale signs that would go up in the shops or moving equipment through the store.

Ray Jacqmin was still a senior at Lewiston High School when he heard that Woolworth’s had a program for prospective managers. He signed on even before he graduated.

He quickly learned the retail pecking order. New hires had the worst jobs, from cleaning the bathrooms to filling the curved-bottomed fire pails with water each month. The pails had the curved bottoms to discourage the store employees from removing them from their hooks and using them for other purposes.

During thunderstorms — when the electric lights were out — Jacquin was tasked with igniting the gas lamps that still served as as a backup.

“You learned and you moved up,” he said. In just over a year, he rose within the company until he was sent to other stores as a manager.

The time period offered other opportunities, though.

After working in Woolworth’s for four years, from 1935 until 1939, Dennis watched many of the men become drafted as the U.S. began building up its armed forces with the beginnings of World War II in Europe.

“They needed managers,” Dennis said. She was 19 when her boss asked her to be an assistant manager.

“I wasn’t going to refuse,” she said. “I needed the money. My mother needed the money.”

A few co-workers were upset, though.

“The older girls were not happy,” Dennis said. “Some had been there longer.”

She held the job from 1939 until 1945, when she married.

Dennis said she got along with most everyone. However, others remembered being frightened of their bosses.

One woman told stories of a boss who scared workers by walking through the sales areas cracking his knuckles.

Theresa Ouellette, who worked at Newberry’s from 1946 to 1950, remembers a boss who everyone called “Mr. Ichon.”

“You had to be on your toes,” she said. Customer areas needed to be clean and tidy. Merchandise needed to be pristine.

Ouellette would work in several departments, eventually working on her store’s windows.

The creative work would go on. She later opened a ceramics shop that thrived for 17 years.

Dennis went on to work in local banks before retiring from TD Bank’s Lewiston operations center 10 years ago at the age of 83.

Jacquin went on to work for Sears in its advertising department. But he still remembers fondly those days on Lisbon Street.

“We got to find out what life was like,” he said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com

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