A Time Remembered

                                          

I went to the grocery store this morning and there is nothing very exciting about that, but as usual, it opened my memory bank to a different era in my life. A time forever stamped in the walls of my heart.

    In my hometown, which was only a village, we boasted of having a school with all twelve grades, a post office, and at one time a train depot, a filling station, and not one but three country grocery stores. The neat thing about that was if one of them did not have what you needed the other one did.
      The outstanding thing about country stores was not only did they sell groceries, but also every household item you might need from a bag of pinto beans to the pot to cook them. If they didn’t have it stocked you could place an order with them and pick it up the next week.

     At Mr. Pierce’s grocery, you could buy anything from a washing machine to a bar of soap for your home; not to mention all the good things listed under grocery items. He kept the meat counter well stocked and was a place where you could purchase anything from Uncle Charlie’s minute steaks, nice cuts of tenderloin, to a pound of bacon. Mrs. Pierce made a great bologna and cheese sandwich and offered a cold pop to drink. I would walk a mile to buy one of their ice-cold RC cola’s and a moon pie right now.  There were even female needs such as cold cream for your face, a home permanent wave in a box, bobby pins, and tubes of lipstick. I can tell you many of the women of the community were pleased with being able to buy these items.

      Mr. Wilson would sell you a wood stove, a gallon of gas, or take you in his storeroom where he had a selection of women’s dresses, men size pants and shirts, shelves stocked with adult and children's shoes and boots of all sizes. There were shelves in the front of his store filled with a wide selection of canned goods. In another corner was a shelf  of over the counter medicine for the aid of a common cold, toothache pain, and a remedy to slow down a belly ache, or soothe heartburn.   

     One of my fondest memories of Wilson's grocery store was the large jars of different kinds of penny candy and bubble gum that were neatly lined along his counter…A child’s delight.

      

     This brings me to the third store in the community.... Feather Grocery. One of the oldest and the finest in the country anywhere found. The women for miles around would come to this store to shop at Mrs. Julie’s corner of the store. On the shelves were bolts of colorful material from country gingham to the finest of silks. There was material for making anything from a set of draperies for your living room to yardage for a silk dress. There were bolts of cotton material for sewing your drawers and petticoats. There were rolls of silk ribbon for decorating your dresses and blouses or making bows for your hair. Placed on a large spool holder were spools of thread in a rainbow of colors. Pretty buttons, straight pins, and needles, were in a cabinet neatly lined up in each drawer. Not far away were shelves of  china, table glasses, and silverware for sell. It was all there down to the table cloth to put on your dinner table.

     In the backroom of this wonderful old store was well stocked with almost every item the farmers would need for taking care of their cattle or running a barbed wire fence to keep them contained. This great old establishment was a place where the farmers gathered on a daily basis, to discuss and cuss the weather and politics. It was a place to buy and trade among them, a place to share the friendship of a community, and to just sit and rest for a spell.

The country stores served as not only a food store, but also an appliance store, a drug store, a hardware store, a dress shop, a short-order restaurant, and a gathering place for the community. It is a place gone now and some refer to it as “Time lost.” I like to think of it as, “Time Remembered.”

     Those were simple times of my childhood; a time when living was slower, times may have been harder, but life was simpler. It was a time when you knew your neighbor and called him,” friend.” 

As my memory goes back to the old country store,
There's things I remember; treasures by the score.
A spirit of friendship with neighbors and kin,
All sharing their stories time and again.

Their days were slow, they knew how to give,
A time when they all knew what it takes to live.
In today's grocery store so much it does lack,
Folks are to busy and don't know how to act...

OR, that is the way I see it.