"They're bringing out everything now - the really old stuff," said Singer, pointing to a Windsor-style headboard propped against the wall next to complete model bedrooms and living-room furniture arranged in conversational settings around coffee tables and accented by end tables with lamps.
While some of the - must-sell, 40-percent-to-50-percent-off - furniture may be old and pulled from the recesses of the warehouse stock, the merchandise looks undamaged, seemingly impervious to the bad times that have befallen this bankrupt Philadelphia institution.
It never was a glamorous place - just a big, almost-shabby showroom crammed full of conflicting furniture styles - Shaker chests next to lacquer chairs wedged between colonial couches sitting cater-corner from chrome lamps and more.
There's a lot less furniture now - plenty of walk-around space - but what's most noticeable is that the old energy is gone.
The we-can-make-a-deal salesmen like Singer, who greeted customers with a handshake, a pat on the back and sometimes an accommodating, ingratiating wink, have been replaced by salespeople hired by the bankruptcy court.
The corner stairwell, where Nate Ben would perch on the landing, chomping cigars and overseeing the operation, is vacant now. Even the phone he had installed there is gone, as is Nate Ben, who died in May 1991.
By dying he escaped going to prison, but his younger brothers, Reuben Ben and Herman Benn, who along with Nate were convicted in 1990 of stealing more than $1 million in sales-tax revenue over 20 years, are doing time at the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pa.
