Published: August 14, 2008 06:28 pm            

Michael O'Connor: Just one more trip down nostalgia lane, if you please

Once an old, er, fogey, starts reminiscing about the past, he can’t stop.

My trip down the cheap gas, good service memory lane started me thinking about another marvel of the ancient past, the grocery store.

How much different could they be from today’s wonders?

Well, to start with, the selection was a lot more limited. We might have a couple of brands of bread, for instance, and most of it was white bread.

My parents were from Chicago and New York City, and were used to finding all kinds of exotic breads to eat until they moved to Texas. When a big chain store finally moved to town that offered deli selections, they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Me, I stuck with white bread. Tasted better with peanut butter and jelly.

A couple of differences between then and now stand out. One was that you could supply your dinnerware and flatware needs for “free” at your local grocery store. Buy so much in groceries, and they would throw in stainlessware, plates, cups, glasses, just about everything you needed.

My folks used to figure out which store they would shop not by the specials on the food, but by the crockery or flatware that was being offered.

In my house, that was the good stuff. For day-to-day we used plastic plates and glasses that were orginally jelly jars. Mind you, these weren’t your average jelly jars. They were specifically made and marketed to be used as tumblers in the home.

The other thing that stands out, as with gas stations, was the service.

Someone who could always tell you exactly where the product you were looking for was, and nine times out of 10, the employee would take you to the appropriate aisle and hand you the product — especially if it was on the top shelf and the customer was short like my mother. When you checked out, a bagger carefully put your groceries in bags, placed the bags in your shopping cart, took them to your car, loaded them in the trunk or back seat or wherever, and bid you a pleasant farewell.

You didn’t have to ask, and your age didn’t matter. The service was provided.

Besides the free stuff you earned with your grocery purchases, you would receive trading stamps. You’d glue the stamps in a book, and when you had enough books, you could take them to a redemption center and trade them for all kinds of stuff. All you had to pay was the tax. Most of my mother’s kitchen appliances were obtained that way.

We didn’t, however, buy dairy at the grocery store when I was in elementary school. The Borden’s man brought us milk, eggs and margarine, put it in our refrigerator and carted off the empty milk bottles. Did I forget to mention your milk came in glass bottles?

From the grocery store to the stamp store to the milk man, most of the employees worked for years at their positions and came to know you and your preferences. They called you by name and asked how you were doing, what your family was up to.

Those days are gone, but one thing has remained constant through the years. In heaven only knows how many years of engineering and building shopping carts, no one seems to have figured out how to keep carts from having at least one wheel that doesn’t work properly. And I know that the cosmos is so ordered that I always have and always will grab the one rolls the worst.



Michael O’Connor can be reached at editor@trcle.com.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.