My Pop’s Pop, the Grocer

A few days ago I read a newspaper column about the joy of grocery shopping and its potential—or perhaps inevitable—demise in the era of big boxes and Amazon. The author conflated roaming the cereal aisle with roaming the savannah in search of breakfast, and she lauded the casual exchanges with the meat-man at the deli counter or a fellow-shopper over cauliflower as small personal connections that help to confirm our common humanity. She enjoys eavesdropping on parents and sugar-hungry children in front of the Frosted Flakes and imagines the life of the man ahead of her at the checkout who loads the conveyor with tins of cat food and loaves of white bread. She particularly enjoys her pre-holiday shopping excursions, where she senses a joyful anticipation of the coming together of family and food.

I like grocery shopping, too. I linger over the vast array of jams, knowing full well that I will settle on Robertson’s thick cut orange marmalade. I hover over the packages of bacon, recalling the days before I saw it as a threat to my longevity, and move on to the baking aisle where I can’t find the cornmeal. Again. I only need to replenish my supply every couple of years, and I can never find it. A friendly employee directs me to the cereal aisle. I live in a small city, and I usually run into someone I know. Like the columnist, I snoop at other people’s carts and imagine their lives—and I wonder if they’re snooping at mine and what they’re thinking.

In the early part of the twentieth century, my grandfather owned a grocery store in the small town of Bangor in eastern Pennsylvania. 

I never knew that grandfather, and I never saw the store. But stories of it percolated through my childhood. In this post, and the next several, I’m going to share excerpts from a small book my dad wrote, entitled My Pop, The Grocer

Dad wrote about peach season, when housewives flocked to the store early in the morning to get the best peaches for canning; about little drawers of tea, labelled with the name of the woman who requested that particular blend; and about the new chain store that threatened his old-fashioned store and was, of course, eventually victorious. 

But not before Pop put up a fight.

Across the street the chain store did not open until eight o’clock, but sometimes a new manager would come earlier, just to see when it was that Pop arrived.  One of them came one Saturday as early as six, but when he looked over our way he saw the green goods already arranged in front of the store, and Pop standing there quietly, with his crossed hands underneath his white apron, chewing idly on a broom splint.  To the chain store manager it looked as if he might have been standing there all night.  After that the chain store manager quit trying…

Chain stores in Pop’s time were just beginning to compete with the independent grocery stores.  Pop shook his head about them and said, ‘They’ll be the ruination of the country!’…As long as Pop lived, none of us was allowed to set foot ‘in one of them chains.’

As long as mydad lived, he celebrated little grocery stores, echoing his own father’s dismay at the proliferation of “them chains” and the loss of pickle barrels and huge, pungent rounds of sharp cheddar cheese. Here in Mexico, where I spend my winters, I can avoid “them chains” more easily than I can at home in Canada. I think Dad would approve of the grocery shopping options near my home in Guanajuato. I pick out my own fresh produce from bins along one wall, and then turn around to the counter and ask for a litre of milk, a loaf of bread, or a package of pasta—things that are on shelves out of the customers’ reach.

In Pop’s grocery store, no customer would think of waiting on herself.  She kept on her side of the counter, and the clerk stayed on the other side.  Most of the things the customer wanted had to be weighed or measured.  Sugar, raisins, cookies, or rice would have to be scooped out of bins or boxes and weighed…This all took time, and clerks, as they worked, were expected to talk to customers.  They were expected to ask about the new baby, or the sick grandma, or the grown son who had moved away.

In my little Mexican store, I have to ask in Spanish, of course. Once, when I thought I was ordering ham, I ended up with a bar of soap. 

There’s a bigger selection of fruits and vegetables at the fruteria, just a few steps away from the little grocery store. And here’s where I buy a kilo of eggs (about 14), flour, sugar, rolled oats, all weighed out as Pop would have done.

Most of the produce is self-serve, but the avocados are kept behind the counter so customers can’t pinch and poke at them to choose just the right ripeness—as customers probably did with the peaches in Pop’s store.

“Three avocados, please.”

“For today?”

 “One for today, two for tomorrow.”

And that’s what I get. One perfect avocado, and two a bit too firm. Good for tomorrow.

“And half a pineapple, please.” Because I really can’t use a whole one.

Does Amazon do that? And how could you ever choose the right watermelon without being able to thump it?

Pop would put his head down close and tap the melon right beside his ear, using his fore and middle fingers. After doing this with a few, he would say to the customer, without any hesitation, ‘There’s your melon for you!’ And the happy customer would buy it without question. When he was very busy, he sometimes tapped only one melon—perhaps one that he had found not good enough before—and declared it to be the melon…

One day when we were not busy, I asked him how he did it. He took time to show me. They didmake slightly different sounds if you tapped them just right and had your ear just right. It was the deep thuddy-sounding ones you were supposed to pick. ‘But what about when all the deep thuddy-sounding ones are gone?’  I asked him.

‘There’s always some better than others,’ he replied.

‘But near the end—when there’s only a few left!  The last ones are probably no better’n pumpkins!’

Pop folded his arms under his apron and looked across the street, the way he did when he was thinking out something serious. He must have decided I was old enough to know the truth about such things. “Well, I tell you,” he said finally. “The real choosin’ is done when the truck comes. If it’s a good lot of melons you got no need to be afraid.  Folks just like to think they’re gettin’ something better than somebody else.’

Some things haven’t changed!

Once in a while, if business was slow, Pop would make a different kind of test to prove the melon was good.  He would take a broom splint and carefully lay it straight across the middle of the melon. All by itself the splint would slowly turn from crosswise to lengthwise.  This was supposed to prove that the melon was fully ripe and ready to be eaten.  …

 I asked Pop if I could try testing with a broom splint for myself.  He said all right, provided that I did not always take splints from the same broom. After all, the brooms were for sale too. I was surprised to find how easily the splint turned and after a few tries I said, “Hey, Pop!  The splint turns on all of them!”

“It will, if you lay it just right.”

“But don’t you ever find one where it won’t turn?”            

“No, we’ve been agetting a pretty good crop of melons lately.”

Next time, I’ll tell you about buying tea and pickles in Pop’s store.