pyroguysr's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Teaberries When I was a kid and we would drive 12 miles up from Munster to Whiting just so mom could shop in Peter Wojcik's "Red Star" grocery store, the front counter was the fav place to hang out. This was a full-service grocery store that is about the size of an average 7-Eleven, yet it packed 4 times as many groceries AND had a live butcher shop at the back! I don't know how he did it!! I mean, I've been in the shop since Peter passed away (it's an antique shop now) and it seems so small! But on either wall there were floor to ceiling goods and 7 foot shelving down the middle three aisles. AND, they let my folks buy groceries on credit. No, not with a credit card, but on credit! You know... like Whimpy telling Popeye, "I'd gladly pay you on Tuesday for the price of a hamburger today!" I remember my mom once asking Marie (Peter's Mom, who was the cashier) "What's our balance?" It was $270... in the days when my dad was earning $65 a month! The store was old. It had wooden floors that were so worn that they sagged when you walked across them. It had a tin-tiled ceiling which, unless you were a small child only 3 ft tall, you never looked at it. I had to use this claw thing to reach up and get the cereal I wanted from the top shelves. Peter usually got things like that, but I wanted to get my own cereal, so he would get out a step-stool for me, have me climb up and then would hand me the claw. I usually just knocked the box of cereal down... sometimes more. He would just smile and tell my mom that he'd take care of putting it back up and place the box on the floor. Peter was also the butcher. All the meats were displayed in a freezer case about, oh, 12 feet across. He only had a few choice cuts of meat out. If you wanted something a little different, more fat, less fat, boneless, thick-cut, etc, he would go into the giant walk in refrigerator and pull a carcass off the hook, cut your meat and put the carcass back. It was frighteningly interesting to a 5 year old kid like me. Behind the meat counter, Peter had a butcher's block, a band-saw (how do you think they cut the steaks off that rib roast?) and a humongous adding machine with rows and rows of buttons (nothing like the adding machines we have today! It had numbered buttons (1-0) where you put in the ENTIRE number across, went down one row, put the ENTIRE next number, etc then pulled a handle like a slot machine for it to add it all up!) I spent hours amused by that machine while mom shopped. At the end of the shopping, mom would bring the groceries up to the counter in one cart, I'd bring another cart over and Marie would start punching in the numbers on the cash register. She'd bag as well and then hand the bag over the counter and Mom would put the bag in another shopping cart. On the counter, there was (naturally) a display of candy. You could get bubble gum cigars, candy cigarettes, Tootsie Rolls, salt-water taffy, Necco Wafers and an assortment of other stuff. If Mom was able to pay a goodly portion of our bill, Peter would give my brother, Mike, and I a bottle of Yahoo chocolate soda. Mom always bought a pack of Beaman's "Pepsin" Gum and Clark's Teaberry Gum to give us a stick on the way home. I remember both flavors with relish. They disappeared for awhile, but neither company ever really went out of business. I didn't see them for several years until "Specialty Candy Stores" opened and brought back the brands that us hoards of baby-boomers remember, About two months ago, Kat gave me a jar containing little red pellets. "I don't like these, do you want them?" "What are they?" "Supposed to be Teaberry, but they don't taste right." I tried them and hummed happily... and I ate the entire jar that night. Kat recently came back from visiting with family over the holidays and the dear sweet thing that she is brought back three bags of teaberry pellets AND two packs of Clark's Teaberry gum! I'm in heaven. 3:05 a.m. - 2006-01-07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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