Corner Stores

                                              

Gin

No matter where we lived in Pittsfield in the 1950s,  one of the first things I did as soon as we were settled in a new place would be to locate the nearest corner store.  Corner stores were what we always called them.  Another name might be a variety store or even a neighborhood store. Most of these stores were at the intersection of two streets but even if they weren't on a corner we still called them corner stores.  The ones I remember were always on the street level of a two story building.  The family who ran the store often lived above it. 

These stores were not the kinds of convenience stores we know today: full of snacks, brewed coffee, and microwaved fast food, even beer and wine. The corner stores when I was a kid were small grocery stores, mom and pop operations.  You’d expect to find cigarettes, soda, potato chips and candy but it might come as a surprise that some offered fresh baked bread which they would slice as you waited.  Others had a meat-grinding machine. When my mother sent me to get hamburger, I waited while they ground it fresh. Just the amount you requested. A few of the larger stores had produce like potatoes, onions, apples and bananas.  In the days before the large-scale super markets and once a week shopping, these small family run stores were a staple of every neighborhood.

The corner store is where I'd go to get milk for my mom, candy for me, and the Sunday paper for my parents.  Every Sunday, while my parents were still in bed,  I'd walk to the corner store to pick up the waiting Sunday New York Herald Tribune.  While Bill's family lived in the Boston area and was partial to the Globe, out in western Mass when we thought of a big city, it was New York that came to mind.  When we began to receive more TV stations in Pittsfield it was the New York independent stations we watched.  When my parents wanted a city vacation to listen to jazz, watch a show, or go to museums, it was New York they visited.   And when they wanted to leisurely look over a Sunday paper, the New York Herald Tribune was their choice. 

From our house on Stanley Avenue, the walk was down the hill, along Springside Avenue to Dartmouth, just because I liked walking by the Crane School, then down Dartmouth to Dalton Avenue. I’d then walk a block along Dalton to where it intersected with Harvard to the store. This was the classic corner store.  Yes, it was right on the corner, in a brick two story building, one large store window looking out on Harvard, the other window taking in the view on Dalton with the door right in between.  I’d walk up Harvard to get home completing the loop. I was only in third grade but felt very confident doing this errand for my parents every week.

When we lived on Dewey,  my walk to get the paper was much shorter, a few blocks down Dewey to Linden.  Right by the bridge on Linden was the store. From my house on Plunkett it was another easy walk down to Tyler Street where I had to cross Tyler and then a block up at Parker to the store. At this point crossing busy Tyler was no big deal.  After all by this time I’m in 6th grade! 

When we lived on Montgomery, even though I had a bike, I always walked.  The store was literally around the corner, a block down Weller at Lenox Avenue. 

In the summer the walk to get the paper was pleasant, warm usually, even at 8am. In the winter it took longer to put on the outside clothes than to do the walk.  It was never very far.  On rainy mornings, I’d toss on my raincoat.  I never liked carrying an umbrella.  On the way home I’d tuck the paper inside the coat to keep it dry.

Getting a Sunday paper was a tradition that lasted most of my childhood.  I never had to pay for it.  My father  reserved the paper, paying ahead of time.  Our paper wasn't on display with the others.  It was under the counter.  I simply had to mention my father's name for it to be handed to me. That made me feel special.  The paper was thick, thicker in the fall with ads anticipating the approaching gift-giving holidays.  The outside section was always the comics, or as we called them, the funny paper.   It looked like the paper was wrapped up like a present in the colorful comics.  I'd walk home trying not to peek at Peanuts which was featured on the front.  I didn't want to spoil the pleasure I would have later by stretching out on the living room floor with the comics spread out in front of me.

Once home, I'd heat water for instant coffee, black with sugar for my dad and just black for my mom.  Then I’d bring the paper and the coffee up to their bedroom, keeping the comic section for me. Later in the afternoon, after Sunday dinner, it was my parents’ turn to lie on the living room rug with the paper scattered in front of them.  This was known as “looking at the ads”.  I always thought this was funny as these were not stores we would shop at, like Neiman Marcus, or things we would buy, like Danish modern furniture.  But it meant a lot to my parents as they obviously enjoyed doing this every week. Perhaps it was a way of expressing their shared taste in the finer things of life even though they realized most of it was beyond their means.  But not always.  One year  my mother pointed out an ad for turquoise jewelry. Santa must have been listening. It showed up under our tree that Christmas.

My favorite corner store was the one I went to on Dewey when I was in fourth and fifth grades.  Technically it wasn't a corner store as it was in the middle of the block, but it was run in the traditional way by an elderly Jewish couple who lived above the store. Here I learned to enjoy halvah. Halvah is a confection popular across the Mideast, an ethnic food.  But I didn’t know anything about that.  To me it was just another kind of candy, as familiar to me as a Milky Way. In fact when we moved again and halvah wasn't available at that corner store, I was surprised.  I think it’s likely one of the owners on Dewey gave me a piece to try one day.  I doubt I would buy something I didn't already know I would like.  The Dewey store is also where I  bought toasted pumpkin seeds, a snack my friends in Tucker school introduced me to.  If halvah had n Mid-eastern connection, then the pumpkin seeds were a part of  the African-American culture in the neighborhood.  Each store was a reflection of the community within which it was located.  (See the blog, Neighborhood Cultures, for more on these differences.)

I liked being in that store on Dewey. There were counters on two sides and at the back. Behind the counters were tall shelves filled with cans and boxes. The store always seemed dark.  There must have been lights hanging from the ceiling but what I most remember is the light coming in from the front windows was so bright it left most of the rest of the store in darkness. I was fascinated with the tall shelves, the whole layout of the store. 

My parents had a “tab” at the store.  If my mother ran out of detergent as she was doing laundry, she would send me to the store to get some.  I’d walk in the store and say, “My mother needs soap powder.” No need for money. The person would write something down, hand me the detergent and I’d be on my way.  I assume my parents paid the tally every week.

You did have to ask the clerk for what you wanted.  You couldn’t get it yourself. The clerk would take a long pole with a grabber at the end to reach up to the top shelf to take down a box of laundry powder.   I wonder what system they had for arranging the goods they sold and how they remembered where to go if, instead of detergent, somebody asked for  a can of soup.

I loved that pole grabber device and longed to use it.  I never had the chance, but the couple who ran the store did give me an order pad one day after noticing my interest.  I loved that pad.  Two colors of paper with a sheet of carbon between them so whatever you wrote on the top layer would come through to the lower. One copy for the customer and a copy for the store.  It was set up so that after you tore off the duplicate order slip, you could move the carbon paper attached at the back to go between the next pair of order pages. 

It was organized with rows and columns.  This was the paper and pencil version of Excel. Pre-printed on the pad were places for the name and price of the item, quantity purchased, and final price. Once each row was completed, it would be totaled at the bottom right.  I loved filling out those forms with imaginary purchases.  At home with pad in hand, I would raid my mother’s pantry setting up a store in the dining room.   I cut up pieces of paper to make small squares that I could tape onto the cans and boxes to mark the prices. (Oh, what I would have been able to do with Post-its!)  My cooperative ever-patient mother would make purchases so I could write them up.  I particularly liked it when she ”bought” two of something so I could fill out the quantity, price per item and total in addition to the total amount at the bottom. No money necessary.  My mother also had a tab at my store.

Whenever I had a nickel to spend, my focus was on the case that held the penny candy  Again, this was not a self-serve situation.  One of the store people would stand behind the candy counter with a small white paper bag awaiting my decisions.  There were no brand names. Nothing pre-packaged.  It was all there in front of me in individual trays waiting for me to decide.

I would take a long time making my selections unaware that I was monopolizing the store clerk for a five-cent purchase.  But this was important. I had a lot of options to weigh. From the point if view of the clerk here was a little kid standing silently in front of the candy counter. But there was a lot of conversation going on inside my head.

"No way I am buying those small wax bottles with colored-liquid inside. I did that once. What a waste. They aren't really candy.  Neither are the wax lips. Hmm. how about a spearmint leaf?  I like that flavor and they are pretty big and thick, Yes. One of those.  The atomic fire balls are big and they last a long time, but they're too hot. I do want something hot though. I know.  A cinnamon hard candy.  They last almost as long as a root beer barrel. Ok. That's two cents. What else?  A different flavor from what I have already.  How about that long strip of paper with the colored dots. You get a lot of them but you eat a lot of the paper as well. I know, a mint julep.  Ok, that's three.  Lets see.  What other things are there?  The marshmallow shaped like an ice cream cone? A tootsie roll? I don't have anything chocolate yet.  No. Some malted milk balls.  I think you get two of those for a penny. One more penny to spend.  Bazooka bubble gum?  They have a comic inside. But my mouth gets tired chewing gum.  A Squirrel Nut chewy bar?  Nope. I know, that jelly-type candy that looks like a slice of watermelon. I like the coconut on top of it.  That's my five cents.  Next time, I'll get a licorice stick or lollipop.  The Tootsie pops are two cents, but I guess you have to think of it as two candies in one."

Most of the time the money to buy these goodies came from returning empty soda bottles to the store.  With a nickel in my hand I wouldn’t want to purchase a regular candy bar. Those were for grownups. I didn’t want to commit all my money for one flavor when I could get five different tastes instead. That was the appeal of the penny candy, the variety.

When we moved to Plunkett, we were closer to more stores.  I’m older now (sixth grade), have a bike, and Tyler Street, a main thoroughfare, is right down the hill from my house. One option was the store that my brother worked at, right at Tyler and Plunkett.  It was on a corner but wasn't really just a corner store, more like a market.  It had fresh produce, both lettuce and cabbage as I related in my Musings on Embarrassments blog entry, a full meat counter, and shelves with boxes and cans that were self serve.  This store was a transition from corner store to self-serve, once-a-week super markets that were beginning to show up in Pittsfield but weren’t yet part of my family's shopping schedule.

There were two other more traditional corner stores on Tyler, each with its own personality.  My favorite was Kirk's Variety. This was just a block east of my brother’s store.  Kirk’s was a fun place to go because they had a wide range of toys on display. Kites, balsa airplanes, model building sets. Also a selection of paperback books which were just coming onto the market in Pittsfield at that point. I never got the Sunday paper at Kirk’s.  This was a store for me. I’d look through the paperbacks and also this strange, funny magazine I discovered, Mad.  I particularly liked the fold-in on the back page even though I didn’t know it was making fun of fold outs.  I thought it was clever the way both pictures worked, unfolded and folded.  I knew I could buy a copy and bring it home.  My father thought the satire was clever.

Across Tyler from St. Mary’s church and school was the store I went to to get the Sunday paper. I don’t know why my father didn’t send me to Kirk’s.  Maybe they didn’t reserve papers there. I imagine being right across from the school, this store must have been jammed every afternoon during the school year.

This was also the store where I discovered Mallo Cups.  Before Reese’s peanut butter cups became popular, there were different kinds of “cup" candy.  The Boyer Brothers made several varieties of the cup candy.  One, self-described, was called Cup-O-Cocoanut.   A peanut butter cup covered with chocolate was called a Jamboree. A Fluffernutter was a layer of peanut butter and a layer of marshmallow covered with chocolate.  My favorite of the Brother’s concoctions was the regular Mallo Cup, marshmallow inside and chocolate outside

But there was more to this candy than just a treat. The Mallo Cup sat on a square cardboard coaster inside its wrapper. The cardboard coaster was printed with one of the letters that spelled out M-A-L-L-O-C-U-P.   If you collected all 8 letters and sent them, along with a dime to cover postage, the factory would send you a box of twelve Mallo Cups!  I was committed to this.  No more worrying about variety.  Even time I bought candy, I went for the Mallo Cup.  I think it took me over a year, but one day there it was in the mail. A dozen Mallo Cups. It’s likely I shared the candy with friends who had given me letters to complete my collection.

The years we lived at Montgomery Avenue, from seventh grade through college, marked the gradual decline of the traditional corner store.  When we first lived on Montgomery, there were two or three stores all within walking distance. The closest was on the corner of Weller and Lenox, just a block from my house.  Like most of the corner stores, it was really a house with a store built into the bottom level on the front.   One or my favorites things to get there was what my family called Vienna bread.  I don’t know what it had to do with Vienna but it was a bread with a thin and crispy crust and a light and airy center. It was delivered fresh to the store and they would slice it for you. Nothing better for toast, especially French toast.

A block over on Briggs, heading down toward Waconah, was another corner store.  I'd go this extra distance if my mother wanted hamburg.  They had a meat grinder and would grind the beef while I waited.

By the time I became a teenager many of the neighborhood corner stores had closed. But now I had a bike and could go further afield.  Now my interest was with soda. (Bill from Boston called it “tonic.”)  The best place to buy soda was from a store with a cooler. Now that I was bicycling around Pittsfield, I began to know the stores that had the best coolers and the best selection.  The coolers were  large rectangular metal boxes with metal racks from which the bottles of soda hung suspended in icy cold water.  No cans, only bottles. The flavors were myriad. Birch beer, strawberry, cherry, raspberry, cream, grape, lemon-lime, orange, root beer, ginger ale, ginger beer, and of course cola.   On a hot summer day there was nothing like guiding a soda bottle through the maze until it was free of the box and ready for you to drink.

During the years I lived at Montgomery, our family's shopping routine changed. My parents started going to the big national grocery stores like A&P or First National.  So did most of our neighbors. The one-stop shopping, self serve grocery stores were becoming more common as was the idea of shopping once a week, usually on pay day. The family-run corner stores gave way to 7-11's and other convenience stores often linked to gas stations. Penny candy was disappearing.  Nickel candy bars were the cheapest kind of candy.  Some like Mounds or Almond Joy were even a dime!  Kids who said they wanted soda really meant Coke or Pepsi, not all the flavors I chose from. Adults who wanted fresh bread or hamburg went to super markets in cars.  They didn't send their kids walking down to a corner store for such things. 

Still, I remember all those Sunday morning walks with fondness, feeling I was doing something special for my parents.  Here I was, just a kid, but entrusted with this important job.  Because of me, my mom and dad had those wonderful moments together lying on the living room floor enjoying their Sunday newspaper.