When we were kids we could buy beer.
Really, we could.
Just float this seven year old a few wrinkly bills along with a handwritten note from a parent and if Cooney was behind the counter at the small corner store, I'd be heading back with a quart of Genny, and a six inch cellophaned cardboard rectangle of thin pretzel sticks for me in five minutes flat; hugging the brown paper bag oh so carefully, and stepping over cracks in the sidewalk the whole walk home. My friends, also with a note, could buy cigarettes for their parents, at 45 cents a pack. So think about this, for a dollar you could bribe your child and two of her friends to go grab you your smokes and some Chuckles and they'd still return with change!
This is life in a Northern town, folks. What a great place to grow up in during the 1970s.
Our way of life was simpler then, with these small corner stores open for business every few blocks. Our families bought our staples and other goods like the thick and colorful Sunday paper, a bottle of cream soda and some tin-foiled jiffy pop for watching Sha Na Na with the babysitter, and, in the spring, pastel woven May baskets for special neighbors and night crawlers for fishing.
We had a dozen little mom and pop markets like this in my hometown while I was growing up, and I understand we had even greater numbers than that before I was born.
Knickerbocker's was my favorite, being the place to go to for Bazooka gum, Tootsie Rolls, Fireballs and Swedish fish before church school. Having a palm sized paper bag of molar-rotting confections made the singing of Father Abraham Had 7 Sons all the more enjoyable. I remember half my 7th grade class receiving permission to attend a mid day funeral for a friend and all of us walking from school to church. En route the majority of us stopped at Knickerbocker's to buy pocket-sized packets of Kleenex. Mr. Knickerbocker was so concerned about so many kids being out of school at eleven o'clock, and questioned us for so many details, we were almost late for the mass.
Each corner store had its regular customers, mostly neighborhood folks who would stop in daily for sundries and a quick chat with the owners, all of whom had enormous personalities. Having a reliable bicycle, and parents who trusted our small town was a navigable safe spot for a small child, I was able to partake of them all.
Here is what I remember (and what some good old friends have recently helped me to recall...)
Stafford's would be first to have the latest Archie, Josie and the Pussycats and Betty & Veronica comic books. I always went in looking for the thick Archie double digests. Mrs. Stafford, an avid knitter, would sit behind the counter, keeping eagle eyes on all of the kids, almost daring them to try and pocket a piece of candy. The Staffords had a friendly old hound that lay out front of the store, and occasionally, newborn kittens in blanket-lined cardboard boxes over by the cooler; not to be missed, in case you needed to pick up a cat for home, too.
Orange Crush, Grape Nehi and Yoohoo were always on ice at Beaulah's. Making handcrafted dolls for the neighborhood girls was something special which she was known for and a friend of mine held onto hers for 45 years, only very recently selling them to a local lady who recognized them at her late father's estate sale and felt a nostalgic pull.
If cash was short, Robillard's, who operated their store in the front part of their modest city home behind sturdy and impenetrable thick glass windows, ran Dad a tab for necessities until payday when they'd settle up.
My friends and I would grab fudgesicles and Hershey's ice pops at Butterfield's on warm June strolls home from school. Mr. Butterfield, a decorated war veteran, had no trouble orchestrating the store's form and function, despite being totally blind. I ponder those facts today and choke up with regret that we kids didn't engage him more fully.
In gangs of ten or more ('dead end kids', many parents laughingly called us), we'd ride our bikes to Roth's on sweaty summer afternoons after a dunk in the river; sandy feet allowed without question on the grey asphalt square tiles as we frantically grabbed our dots, wax bottles, and baseball cards with the flat pink gum. We paid for everything with pennies, counted out two at a time in our grubby little fingers as we stood on tiptoes at the chrome counter. "See you later!" we'd bellow to one another, contentedly jumping on banana seats and pedaling homeward.
Barber's market was our family's deli, bakery, and our all around place for groceries. I shopped there at least four times a week for my mother, who pressed dollars carefully into my palm and reminded me not to dawdle or stop or cut through the backyards of our kind and benevolent abutting neighbors, whose yards, as you can imagine, I always tromped through. Petting their dogs, dancing through their sprinklers, and waving to them as I walked along on my way to get bread, milk and Imperial margarine seemed like such fun, and if anyone was bothered that I was tiptoeing through their tulips they never said so.
Today, I make an effort to strike up conversations with store employees at the local Hannaford and Price Chopper. Some are ripe for this human element of what they do, but others are too harried with the work at hand or are less social than I.
Regularly walking by the long closed and shuttered Barber's market, I think, "What if?" Seeing someone open that place back up so that we could all gather and shop on the daily, holding babies and reusable shopping bags, while chatting about the goings on in our beautiful little town would put so much love in my heart.
And I know I'm not alone.
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