LITTLE CORNER STORES

Dad had the milk money all lined up on the book case. Depending on how much it was at the time (3¢, 5¢ or 7¢) it was lined up in little stacks of coins that we’d take on our way out the door with our sack lunches. We were on the honor system that we would only buy whole milk….not chocolate milk. Nothing was ever said about possibly saving the milk money for candy after school.

We’d walk to school and back every day. That’s just the way it was. If we argued, Dad would go into his story about, “When I was a boy…” He made it sound as though he really had it rough when he was a kid. Our eyes started to roll as soon as he started into this dissertation. According to him, he walked 15 miles to school every day in 6’ of snow, and sometimes with an anvil on his shoulder. Needless to say, we all got a kick out of that story.

Walking to and from school wasn’t so bad. We had our friends and cousins to walk with. One yard on the way to school had the whole front yard filled with mint instead of grass. This was great. We’d just snag some to chew on the way to school. The woman standing on the porch watching us didn’t seem to mind. There were little corner stores every few blocks. The little Mom and Pop stores were scattered every 3 or 4 blocks. If we saved our milk money, we could get penny candy on the way. Mostly, it was after school that we stopped. Each little store was unique in its own way, but all of them sold the same things.

To start with, there was usually a wooden porch bigger than most modern day porches. There was a squeaky old screen door. You stepped in onto a wooden floor that gave slightly as you walked around the store. There were ceiling fans, barrels filled with pickles, dried beans or apples. Up in the front was the cash register. The woman that stood there usually had on a white apron and Dr. Scholl’s lace-up high heals with her hose neatly rolled down to just below her knee. She wore a hair net and had a pencil stuck somewhere in her hair. When we arrived after school, she manned her post at the hand cranked register, ready to take our pennies for the candy we selected.


There were all day suckers, little Tootsie Rolls, Root Beer Barrels, Peanut Butter Logs, Gum Balls, Bazooka Bubble Gum, Grape Gum, Sour Balls, Sour Cherries, Peanut Patties, Baby Ruth, Butter Fingers, Sugar Babies, Red Hot Tamales, …..Well, now I’m getting into the 5¢ candy.

In the back was always a meat market. Everyone knew the butcher. You could pick out just what you wanted, and have him slice up whatever you wanted. There were all sorts of huge rolls of bologna, salami, pickle loaf and cheeses. Today, all that simple stuff is in a place in the grocery store called the Deli, and the price is marked up because actually they have to talk to you and then slice it up for you.

Mom would call the butcher and order whatever she needed…pork chops, ground meat or a roast. We really loved it when she’d order mock chicken legs made from seasoned ground beef and rolled in Corn Flakes. The butcher would mold the ground beef around wooden sticks and shape them like chicken legs before rolling them in crushed corn flakes. What a guy!!!! Later Mom or Dad would go pick them up on large cookie sheets, and then Mom would bake them in the oven for dinner. This way, everyone got a drumstick.

Sometimes Mom would send one of us to the store with about 50¢ to get a loaf of bread and a pack of L&M's for her; with instructions to “Bring me the change.” Believe it or not, cigarettes were only about 25¢, and the clerk actually sold them to us. Bread was only about 10¢, cabbage was 6¢ per lb., coffee was 37¢ lb. (freshly ground), and grape jam was about 20¢.

Gone are those days. I really loved going into those little stores. Just take a mental walk into one of those little stores. The aroma of those stores is unmatched by anything of today’s grocery store. The service was personal and also unbeatable by today’s standards. Look around and pick up something for dinner. You can get anything you need at the little corner store.