With the high price of groceries everyone is talking about, I thought I should tell you about the little neighborhood grocery in my old neighborhood near downtown. Working in that grocery was my first job the summer before I turned 16 (1965). My Dad happened to be the meat cutter there, so I had an in. It was Lambert’s Grocery on Highland Avenue just a block south of Michigan Street — almost downtown (1200 block east). It was very small and had wooden floors. I made 75¢ an hour and my first Saturday was a ten hour day. I remember buying a swimsuit with that first paycheck — it cost $7. After that I opened a savings account at American Fletcher National Bank downtown on the Circle and saved some of every check.
I stocked shelves, which I really enjoyed, especially using the price ticket machine. I learned to run the old cash register that didn’t tell you how much change to give back. You had to count the money back to the customer — a lost art. Customers could run a tab and pay at the end of the month. I had a register card that slid through an opening on the side of the register and printed their total.
I also made the window sale signs for the grocery on white butcher paper using black shoe polish. I had learned calligraphy in art classes, so they weren’t bad looking and polish has a chiseled end like a calligraphy pen.
I sold more “Thunderbird” wine for 64¢ a quart than anything else — no laws about minors selling liquor at that time I guess. I can remember fresh Sap’s donuts were 69¢ a dozen. When I was little, 8 or so, I went down to this little store and got a dozen of these “melt in your mouth” donuts every Saturday morning. My brother Mark, sister Gail and I would eat 3 apiece as we watched the “Three Stooges” on TV (Mom must have eaten 3 donuts too). Cake donuts were my favorite. Just a couple weeks ago at my brother’s house I was talking to my brother’s friend from the old neighborhood about these very donuts. He said he waited until the end of the day and fished a box of day old donuts from the trash can out back of the store. He came from a family of 10 kids and 69¢ was more than they could afford.
I vividly remember going to this store by myself the very first time, when I was about 6 years old to buy a bottle of catsup that cost 25¢. I felt so grown up, but I was scared. It was only a block and a half away but I had to cross my street, Sturm and Highland. Another vivid memory is buying a box of birthday candles for my Dad’s 39th birthday (1959) and realizing I needed to buy 2 boxes because one box only had 36 candles.
Like I said my Dad actually was the meat cutter and he was very good. I remember dad slicing me off a big slab of bologna or salami and cheese and I’d make my own thick sandwich for lunch — they tasted so good. Dad was a good salesman too. When a customer would ask, do you have a better chicken than that one in the case, he would take that chicken and carry it into the walk-in freezer, turn the chicken over and come out telling the customer “how about this one” — no one ever realized it was the same chicken.
Months later, when Mr. Lambert retired, it became “Stefan’s Grocery” run by a Polish Jewish man who had survived the concentration camps during WWII. He never wore a coat in the winter — he never got cold.
On Saturdays, I took phone orders from shut-ins and the elderly who couldn’t get out. We had about a dozen customers and I took the order, filled their order in boxes and figured out the total. Stefan loaded up the pickup truck and dropped the groceries off at no extra charge. I got to know the customers by what they ordered, usually about the same stuff every week. It’s amazing that the older you get the more you want the cookies and candy of childhood. You can tell a lot about a person by what’s in their grocery cart. Even now while shopping, I often glance over at other people’s carts and think “Oh, a lot of cleaning products — a ‘Mrs. Clean’” or “Nothing but frozen dinners (how sad) single, hasn’t turned on the stove in years” or “Nothing but sweets and frozen pizzas – no wonder they need a motorized shopping cart.”
I can still hear the sound the old register made, the front door of the store as it banged shut and those squeaky wooden floors.
My family also shopped Standard Grocery on the corner of New York and State Street. As much as we loved our little neighborhood store, they just didn’t have everything. Standard also gave away S&H green stamps with your purchase, which you pasted into little booklets that could be redeemed for merchandise. I know we got a pink bathroom scale with those stamps.
I miss those smaller neighborhood groceries. Nowadays these megastores are way too big. I do like selection and of course the choices are endless — that’s the problem, endless — you can’t decide what to get.
I have a pet peeve about how they stock the shelves in today’s stores. Soda pop (2-liter) are stacked on shelves so high that I have to drag out a couple soda pop cases and stack them to climb up to get one. I’ll admit I’m short, but there is no excuse. I’ve ended up knocking one on my head doing this. Also, I know groceries have to move merchandise once in awhile, but just when I think I know where everything is, they go and move it to some other aisle. I still can’t find the Comet cleanser at one big chain I shop regularly.
This was first published Aug. 16, 2016 and I have a couple of updates. I still like small groceries and Aldi’s has now become my first choice, but they don’t have the variety of Krogers, so I go there too. Both are less that 5 minutes from my house so I’m a very lucky shopper. I still use store coupons and stock up on things while they are on sale. Good luck grocery shopping.
paula.weeklyview@yahoo.com