That’s how Murray Kornfeld, 75, describes Kornfeld’s Department Store, which is celebrating 100 years in operation.
Located at 316 E. Johnson St., Kornfeld operates in the same building that his grandfather opened back in 1922.
Over the last century, it has gone from general store to department store to specialty store. Today, the store sells regular-sized clothing, as well as clothing for big-and-tall.
To throw in another Murray Kornfeld twist, it also has a motorcycle department, complete with helmets and gear.
“When I started riding, I put the motorcycle department in,” he said. “It’s the only store that you can buy your underwear and helmet at the same place. Just don’t put the wrong one on your head or you’ll be looking through the fly.”
The store itself spares no space. Clothes are tightly packed on shelves and racks. There’s enough inventory to clothe thousands of people.
The store is divided into three sections, two for inventory and one for warehouse storage, which includes a very old cash register that was used by Kornfeld’s grandfather.
He said he doesn’t use any sort of electronic inventory system. He keeps track of everything in his head, a claim backed up by longtime employee Clara Glaze.
Kornfeld and his three employees manage the century-old business. In an era in which mom-and-pop stores have closed in the wake of corporate chains and online competitors, Kornfeld’s still stands.
He theorizes that there are only two third-generation stores left in Greenwood: his own and Goldberg’s on Howard Street.
Kornfeld’s was founded in 1922 by Murray Kornfeld’s grandfather, William Kornfeld. William’s birth name was Wolfgang “Wolf” Kornfeldt, a Jewish man born in Berlin and raised in London. The “t” was dropped and he began to go by William when, as Kornfeld explains, people couldn’t understand why someone would be named after an animal.
At the start, Kornfeld’s was “more or less, a general store,” he said.
“They sold some clothing, and this is when you had the railroad,” he said. “They would drop the railroad crews off here at lunch or something. They would come in my grandfather’s store, and they would have sardines and bologna, and he would feed them soda pops.”
William would marry Sarah Diamond. Leslie, Kornfeld’s father, was the youngest of six children and was called “Baby Kornfeld.”
The Kornfeld family lived on Lamar Street, right across the railroad tracks near The Crystal Grill.
“They had a barn back there, and my grandmother had two cows, and my grandfather never owned a car, so my father and his siblings would walk to Davis School,” he said. “They also had a chicken coop. They would deliver eggs and milk on the way to school. On the way home they would pick up the empty milk crates and the empty egg cartons.”
Kornfeld said his grandparents “never had anything. They literally worked every day of their life to make a way for their family.”
Leslie attended the University of Alabama with the intention to be a doctor. A bout with scarlet fever and military service during World War II meant the end of his education.
He met Gertrude Madoff, a beautician, through a girlfriend of Greenwood’s Ike Goldberg. The two would marry and have three children: Susan, Murray and Wendy.
“My father was a good, good man,” said Kornfeld, who still has Leslie’s obituary hanging in the store. “The three things he loved most in this world were his family, his work and his religion.”
Devoutly Jewish, his father was the last president of the Ahavath Rayim Synagogue, Kornfeld said.
Kornfeld grew up in the store and started selling shoes and clothes at 9 years old.
“I probably have worked at this store for about 65 years,” he said. “Not a whole lot of people can say that. When my buddies were out in high school, going to Grenada Lake, going here, going there, my daddy brought me down here and put me to work.”
Before the store took over the spaces, it used to neighbor both a juke joint and a movie theater for Black patrons. In the 1960s, Saturday nights on Johnson Street were party nights.
Kornfeld recalls the store at that time selling Dr. Tichenor’s Antiseptic, which was 85% alcohol.
On Saturdays, Black farm laborers would come to Kornfeld’s to buy the medicine.
“They would come in here, and they would get a bottle of Dr. Tichenor’s,” he said. “Go to the juke joint, get them a Coca-Cola. Take the Coke, pour half of it out in the street, put that alcohol in there, shake it, and drink it up. Then they’d go see the movie.”
After the movie was over, several would come back to the store to get more Dr. Tichenor’s to mix with more soda.
“This was their night to howl, so to speak,” he said. “So many of them lived in the country. They’d come in Friday afternoon after work. They wouldn’t go back to the country until Sunday night.”
Kornfeld’s as a result often would not close until after midnight.
“This part of town was wide open in those days,” he said. “It was a good time too. Blacks and whites, nobody had a problem with nobody.”
Leslie died in 2003, and what was once a family business is now Kornfeld’s to manage with his employees.
“I’ve had 24 days off in 35 years but at least I don’t have to ask anybody for anything,” he said. “I don’t have to miss a meal. I’ve seen Greenwood change. The older ones die off, the younger ones move off. That does not do a town any good.”
In February, Kornfeld’s was honored by a resolution of the Mississippi House of Representatives as “a historic community cornerstone in Greenwood” owned and operated “by acclaimed haberdasher extraordinaire” Murray Kornfeld.
“After a hundred years of business and three generations, I can appreciate the fact that we finally got the recognition of being in business for a hundred years,” he said.
He has no intention of stopping anytime soon. In fact, he said he hopes to keep running the store until he's 100.
