by Jeannie Travis
Our favorite grocery store had the counter up front. You told one of the men what you wanted and he would go get it and make a pile of stuff on the counter. The boxes of Kotex, the only available sanitary pad, were pre wrapped in newspaper and tied with string, probably by a wife, and put in the corner of the store on a top shelf, handy for shy ladies to just come in and point to what they wanted.- of course this wrapped box would have been put in a brown bag. Along one end of the counter stood big grass sacks full of coffee beans and other things I can’t remember, probably potatoes and dry beans.. A skimpy collection of fresh vegetables in the front window tempted those walking by. In summer, those sticky fly trap deals hung down here and there.
In the back of the store was the meat counter and you could get some crackers, bologna and hoop cheese set out on a piece of butcher paper. You could move over in the corner to eat or take it out to the hitch yard. Seems like a good lunch was a dime, then you could get a big RC cola for a nickle, and if you wanted a sweet you could get several different things that cost a nickle each…Moon Pie, big candy bar, potato chips, bag of peanuts ,etc…Yes , we sometimes poured peanuts down in the soda…Try it sometime !
The butcher cut off the amount of bologna you wanted from a big stick of it, then weighed it up, but one day Mama came home from town very well pleased. Seems the store had a contest, if you guessed correctly the amount of bologna the butcher had cut off for you it was free. Well, she guessed correctly and we had free sandwiches that night. I have always thought he let her win because he knew our financial deal, she said ‘no’ when I asked her about it, but if Mama had caught him cheating because he felt sorry for us he would have been in trouble! Nothing made her madder than having someone tell her they were sorry for us… Ah, the good old days.
Do you remember the pride we had in a new oilcloth for the eating table ?…Much care was taken in choosing a pattern, and newspapers folded into pads or ‘pot lifters’ went under hot dishes that were set on the table…Sooner or later someone would forget then Mama would sigh….She’d known it couldn’t stay perfect forever….The main reason for getting a new oil cloth though was that the pattern just got plumb wore off , plus there would be stains here and there …. Sometimes the sorghum molasses or jelly jar would stick to it and when pulled off it took the top of the oilcloth with it…I doubt it cost very much to replace, but pennies were scarce back then..
My favorite memory of that big old table Daddy made for his growing family is what went on it…It was kept bare except for a few things like salt and pepper, but desserts and other things made ahead would be setting on it when we came home from school…We went in through the kitchen door and I was always happy when there was a big plate of fried pies setting on that table waiting for us..We got through with chores in record time on those nights