Day 8 - Favorite Stores When I Was a Kid

Day 8

This prompt brought back some good memories.

My favorite grocery store was Smart's. It was on Scott Avenue. I assume my mom started shopping there when I was a baby and we lived on Huffine Street, right around the corner. When we moved, Mom passed Dorris' Bi-Rite to go to Smart's. By that time she had become great friends with James and Josephine Smart, the proprietors. By today's standards, it was a small store. It had wooden floors that creaked as customers wandered about perusing the shelves.

Mr. Smart knew his customers by name and what they usually bought. He made sure he stocked those particular olives or that soap or whatever customers requested. You could not buy socks or crockpots or dish towels at Smart's. It was a grocery store. I learned my grocery shopping skills from my mom-write a list, forget to take it, shop from memory, get home and start dinner, halfway through preparing the meal realize you are missing 3 ingredients, go back to store. I spent a lot of time at Smart's grocery.

When I got older, I spent my time in the car waiting for mom. Mr. Smart had the feminine products stacked above some totally unrelated item, visible from the front window. I remember being in the car with a friend who had an older sister. I had some notion of the female "curse"  (we watched a film in scouts) but did not quite grasp all the particulars. There was high hilarity in the car that day as she explained the purpose of those items high on a shelf, in the front window of Smart's grocery.

Wilds Hood was a gift shop and florist on Gallatin Road. I don't remember a whole lot about the store except that I have some vague notion that one year (sophomore year, maybe) we had class pictures made there. I look like a half-witted astronomer gazing into space in that picture....with limp hair. Can you tell that I did not care for that picture?

The first gift I ever remember buying my mom was bought there. She gave me the money because she knew how desperately I wanted to get her a Mother's Day gift. My daddy was a lovely man, but, frankly, he sort of stunk at the gift-giving thing. Mom drove me to the store, waited in the car while I browsed through the offered wares. I found what I wanted; a curved porcelain bone dish with pink rosebuds and gold edges. My mom still has that dish.

Martha's (I think I am remembering the name correctly) was a shoe store that was not Stride Rite nor Family Booterie, two stores that mostly had "sensible shoes."  I will say that getting the golden egg filled with small toys and candies at Family Booterie made buying shoes there a bit more palatable. Well, My first pair of tennis shoes were red PF Flyers bought at Martha's. I do not remember if I ever bought another pair of shoes there, but I will never forget my first pair of red PF Flyers.

Only the Dairy Queen separated my high school from my family's favorite pharmacy, Brush Drugs. Daddy was friends with Dr. Brush. I have no idea if Haskell Brush was a doctor or not, but everybody greeted him as "doctor." I am fairly certain that it was Dr. Brush who gave my daddy that most wretched,  foul-tasting, miracle-working cough syrup, Turpin Hydrate. That stuff was lethal, and I would buy some in a heartbeat if it had not been banned in the US.

Once, I had impetigo....from the top of my thigh to my knee. It was miserable. It was my second bout with it and Daddy saw no need in my going back to the doctor, as in real doctor, educated, pediatrician, so, to Brush Drugs we went. Well, of course Dr. Brush needed to see it to arrive at a proper diagnosis. I did not have on shorts or a dress, so, off in the back room we go where I have to "drop my drawers" so "Dr." Brush could check it out. The diagnosis was in; I had impetigo, the disease believed to plague only, dirty, neglected, unkempt folk. He prescribed tincture of Violet. Man, is that stuff really purple. Pretty much anything it touches becomes permanently stained. It was a sad day when Dr. Brush closed his store.

Chester's was the finest department store we frequented. It had a long, sweeping curved staircase from the main floor to the downstairs (basement would be an inadequate description) at the bottom of which resided a talking Mynah bird. I loved that bird. I loved Chester's clothes. I loved Mrs. Green who always waited on us.

"Anyone want to go to the hardware store with me," my daddy would ask. I always said yes. The hardware store meant Inglewood Hardware. My daddy, of course, knew the proprietor because that is how life was then. Daddy was a tinkerer so was always in need of a bolt or screwdriver or washer. I loved looking through all the bins of stuff and how the rattle of the purchases sounded as I carried them out in their little brown paper bag. Going to the hardware store usually meant an afternoon spent as Daddy's assistant learning the difference between flathead and Phillips head screwdrivers or allen wrenches and monkey wrenches. I still love a good hardware store.

Day 8 -Favorite Stores When I Was a Kid - check