It was a corduroy shirt, black, if I remember correctly.

I’m talking here about the first item of clothing I bought in Minnesota after my move here more than 28 years ago.

I lived for three months in a downtown St. Paul studio apartment on 10th Street inside a building that now provides needed transitional housing for single mothers and children. I asked the barkeeper at the long-defunct Asian restaurant on street level shortly after move-in day in October of 1991 where I could buy a decent cold-weather shirt nearby.

“It’s either Dayton’s down where your paper is or Sears on Rice Street,” he told me. Although Dayton’s was closer, I chose the place, as the 1970s slogan once correctly defined the American retail icon, “Where America shops.”

Apparently, no longer. Once the No. 1 world retailer, Minnesota-born Sears fell to 23rd over the years and this week filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Rice Street location, touted as an architectural marvel when it opened in 1963, is among 142 stores nationwide that will close by the end of the year. The only Sears store left in the metro area is the one at the Mall of America.

The generic corporate speak to employees, many of whom will probably lose their jobs, soon followed.

“Today we have announced a series of actions to position us to establish a sustainable capital structure, continue streamlining our operations, and grow profitably for the long-term,” Edward Lampert, Sears Holdings Corp. CEO and hedge fund maven, said in the Monday missive.

“While we have sought to avoid a Chapter 11 process, we have ultimately determined that this is the most effective and orderly way to achieve a debt solution as efficiently as possible and be better positioned for the future,” added Lampert, who also announced that he is stepping down as CEO but remaining as chairman of the board.

Here’s Lampert’s statement in street English: Things went bad. It wasn’t the checkout station cashier juggling the two jobs over at Rice, or the stock worker or assistant manager going to night school who screwed this up. But life is unfair. By the way, I’m letting go of the wheel of this sinking ship, but I have to make it sound like it’s not only not sinking, but getting better.

We folks in the newspaper business and other entities have heard much the same over the years. I’m sure Lampert will land pretty. Not so much the folks lauded on the monthly associate recognition honor wall inside the Rice Street location, though I hope they do, folks with Saintly City surnames like Lee, Yang, Owens, Mohamed, Soto, Wassem and Albea.

But to be fair, mismanagement, complacency, lack of vision, better and more flexible competition, substantial shifts in shopping habits, revenue streams and other factors also contribute to the demise of businesses both big and small.

Wall Street vultures pretty much mimic what their counterparts in nature do: They swoop in and pick off the remaining meat from vulnerable or dying prey. They devour the remains or pick the carcass clean of remaining assets to sell off for maximum profit. They are not in the business of nurturing or giving CPR.

But back to Sears. Back to Rice Street. Back to the place where I bought that shirt and, earlier this year, also three big-ticket appliances.

It was business as usual Wednesday morning. There were regular sales. “30 percent off,” one sign on a coat rack bellowed. “Sears is open 24/7” read another sign on an entrance door that I presumed meant a customer could shop on its online site.

Much of the pedestrian traffic actually headed upstairs by escalator to the second floor, where a privately operated DMV office was crammed with folks applying for license and tab renewals.

I met a friendly guy named Dean who was enticing folks leaving the DMV site to enter for a chance to win $50 Sears gift cards. Fliers seeking seasonal workers — “Light up the Holidays with Sears” — rested on a table.

“They are going to need people until the store closes, but I feel bad for them,” Dean, not a Sears employee, said of the workers there. His mother worked for years at the much larger Lake Street Sears in Minneapolis, which closed in the early 1990s and now serves as the anchor to a popular food market emporium.

“Maybe that’s something they might want to do to this place after it closes,” he suggested.

I headed downstairs. I found Jeff Becker eyeing some sales in the tools section. He went there on this day to pick up a George Foreman grill.

“I’ve been shopping here for 20 years now,” said Becker, a chemical engineer from Eagan who worked at the old Montgomery Ward department store on University Avenue in the Midway when he was a college student.

He heaped praise on a mechanic he regularly went to at the store’s auto center. He now wonders where he will buy tires or get his car serviced when needed.

“It was either this store or the one in Burnsville (closed months ago),” he said.

I struck up a chat with a 30-ish St. Paul couple coming out on my way into the store. They did not want to identify themselves but acknowledged that, unlike Becker, they were not regular Sears shoppers. They shop elsewhere, but had heard about the bankruptcy and just wanted to check things out. Where do they go otherwise?

“We go to Walmart,” the woman said. “It’s just more economical for us.”

Same reason why I chose Sears that fall day so long ago.