ENTRY # EIGHTY EIGHT.

Good Morning.


I am going to try and remember the time in my young life that I worked in a grocery store, and let you see the great difference in that store and the ones that you have in this day.

This would have been the store that I left to go to Memphis, Tennessee. to be married to the sweetest girl on this earth. This was November of the year 1935.

I am going to show you a picture of that store below, and give you the names of the people that you see working there, it's sad to me but all those except I and one of the girls have passed away, sometimes I ask myself why me, it has to be God's mercy and nothing else.

.....

(Click on the picture to make it larger, and then see if you recognize any of the brands of products.)

In the picture above the man taking an order from a customer is my uncle A.E. White . In ther rear going from left to right is Dad talking too my cousin Dorthy, and the next one is Ralph White talking to Edgar Ford one of our customers.

.....
Now I want to tell you just a little of how this store worked. It was of course not self-service. Nothing was in that day, even the service station owners would run out to your car when you stopped, begin to clean your windshield and check your oil, and then fill your otank, and believe it or not he would say THANK YOU FOR STOPPING, when you drove away. The man with the pencil and writing pad was my uncle A.E.White, and he was taking an order from this lady that would be filled after she left the store and then delivered to her home.

There was no such things as shopping carts or check out lanes,And notice the shelving in the old store all wood. No refrigeration of any kind, no egg cartons, they were just put in a paper bag.

The following picture is an enlargement of a portion of the picture above. This one shows the people better. On the far left, that man is old Dad. I’m talking to a customer. The man in the back with the apron on is my brother, Ralph. He is talking to a man wearing a hat. The man in the foreground is my Uncle A.E. White, the owner of the store. You can see the pencil and pad in his hand as he takes an order from the lady on the other side of the counter.

.....

.....
(Click on the picture to make it larger, and then see if you recognize any of the brands of products.)

This picture is the same as the one above from a different view, but the same people.

.....
And another thing before I forget it, money was not very plentiful in those days and sometimes the customer would bring things in to trade for their groceries, like butter, live chickens, eggs and almost any kind of vegetables that they produced, and Uncle A,E would take all this in on the price of their grocery bill. Sometimes he would give me the job of checking all this stuff in. But it did not bother me, for about that time I was thinking about other things.

.....

I AM SURE THAT YOU NOTICED THOSE LARGE BAGS ON THE FLOOR, THAT WAS MEAL AND FLOUR. WE SOLD A LOT OF THAT, BECAUSE WE HAD TO BAKE OUR OWN BISCUITS AND CORNBREAD FROM SCRATCH. NO CONVIENCE FOODS OF ANY KIND, NOT EVEN A MICROWAVE OVEN. BUT WE LOVED THOSE BIG BISCUITS AND CREAM GRAVY THAT MY MOTHER WAS AN EXPERT AT MAKING, I WAS THE FIRST ONE AT THE TABLE EACH MORNING. THOSE OLD DAYS WERE NOT TOO BAD, WERE THEY. DAD...

.....

THIS IS ALL THAT I AM GOING TO HAVE FOR A FEW DAYS, I AM WAITING ON A PICTURE OF THE INSIDE OF A MODERN SUPER MARKET THAT WE CAN COMPARE WITH THE OLD TIME STORE.

....

BYE FOR A FEW DAYS, DAD,

865-850-5763..

© 2009 Dad's Tomato Garden Journal...All Rights Reserved.