MANDY FLYNN: I do love a good grocery store

Maybe it was the fact we needed something for dinner or maybe it was flatout curiosity. Whatever the reason, I stopped by the grand opening of a new market on the way home the other day. Funny some of the things I consider exciting as I get older – checking out a new grocery store is right up there with tracking a storm on the weather radar map and getting to take a nap. Doesn’t get much better than a nap.

But I do love a good grocery store.

I’m not sure where my fascination with them first clicked, but I’d bet it has something to do with the very first grocery store my memory has hold of – Walters Grocery. It was in a building on Main Street Plains, one of eight lined up side by side, and it was made of brick. Outside, tall wooden posts held up a metal canopy that ran the length of all the buildings and I remember standing there listening to the rain hit the weathered metal many a day waiting for it to quit so we could run home. The grocery store had a heavy wooden and glass door with a metal latch and its floors were wide, wooden planks I bet I walked barefoot on more times than I could count because we never wore shoes in the summer. Tall windows flanked the door and you could look inside from the sidewalk and see the long, wooden counter, from what I recall, with a big scale on it to weigh things.

Mama would tell us how the town’s first telephone company used to be on the second floor, with a switchboard and ladies who ran it. I also heard tales of how way back they used to make cabinets and furniture there and sometimes they’d make caskets, too. Later there was a mortuary a few doors down. I don’t remember if I ever went up the stairs that led to where all that went on once, but I’m pretty sure I was scared to. I’d rather stay downstairs where the store had all I would ever want and there was no fear of ghosts.

I remember Miss Gladys or Miss Beth or Miss Sandra standing behind that big counter and when I’d come in they’d always call me by name. Mr. C.L., too. There was a big, round wooden box up front and in it was always the biggest piece of cheese I thought I could ever imagine. The cheese was covered in red wax to protect it and I’m not quite sure why it’s called hoop cheese, but I remember watching them slice off big pieces of it and putting it in paper for folks buying soda crackers and drinks in real glass bottles.

I didn’t particularly care for the hoop cheese, but I was still fascinated by it. More times than not, I went straight for the candy unless mama sent me down specifically for milk or something else. Even then, a few wax candy bottles filled with sweet syrup usually made it into the bag and Miss Gladys or Miss Beth or Miss Sandra would pull out that little receipt book and carefully write down what we got. At the end of the week or the month, I’m not sure, I guess they would send all the tickets to mama or daddy and they’d pay them.

They’d deliver groceries to your house, too, if you called them and I remember one time I was sick and mama called and somebody brought some St. Joseph’s baby aspirin to the house, the orange kind, because mama didn’t want to leave me. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was from all the wax bottles I’d been chewing on and sugar I’d been drinking. That, or the candy cigarettes, the ones with the powdery covering that looked like real puffs of smoke when you blew on them. Were they cool? I probably thought so.

And definitely, back then, more exciting than a nap.

I do love a good grocery store, but I bet I’ll love none better for as long as I live than the one I’m holding dear with the wide wooden plank floors and a round wooden box of hoop cheese. Where you could go barefoot and they always called you by name.

Doesn’t get much better than that.

Visit Mandy Flynn’s website www.mandyflynn.com.