DelBloggolo: $.28 + $.99 = $1.27!

Sunday, April 19, 2015

$.28 + $.99 = $1.27!

A man moves from his apartment into a larger one in a newer neighborhood. He goes out one day looking for a shoemaker with a pair of shoes he wishes to have repaired. Finding one, he enters and the shoemaker takes his shoes and tells him to come back on Tuesday for his repaired shoes. The man goes home and drops the ticket into a draw and forgets about it.

Twenty years pass and the man is moving once again, and as he is emptying his drawers, comes upon the ticket from the shoemaker. He decides to see if the shoemaker might have the shoes still after 20 years. He returns to the shoemaker who is now grey and older looking and hands him the ticket. The shoemaker takes one look at it and says, “Oops, come back on Tuesday!”

Indeed it does and I learned that from a brown paper bag written in black crayon.

When I was about 7 years of age, my mother would give me money to get a quart of milk, a 1/2-pound of bologna or some other goods that she needed immediately. In those days in the early 50’s, it was common practice to visit the local grocer and purchase what you needed. I would give him my verbal order and he would fill it, then on the brown paper bag, write down the costs of each item then sum it up and circle the bottom line. I would watch and realize that the man was a genius, not using his fingers to add as I did! He had a claw on a long handle and when you needed something out of the way and stored on high, he would take out his claw and snatch it off of the shelf, I watched this and was fascinated by it.

Once a week my sister and I would go to the local butcher shop and give our list Mom prepared for the weekly meat order and once again a brown paper bag was produced with neatly wrapped meats. The butcher would cut the meat fresh as he took the order, wrapped it in paper and then more butcher paper with folded corners tucked in and set aside. He would take a large brown paper bag and do his addition, skimming through the numbers like a human calculator and add up everything, and we’d pay it. Once again, he didn’t use his fingers. Hanging from the ceiling were exotic meats and cheeses that he sold, fresh off the boats and ready to buy, you saw this and knew you were in a butcher shop.

These were life’s lessons, how to arrange your numbers and how to add without using your fingers and toes!

The green grocer had the same routine for his goods and that was the life of the mom and pop stores. In those days where money was not so plentiful, you went to a shoemaker who didn’t make shoes but repaired them. You fixed your old shoes after you wore out the soles, got new heels and soles and they were polished and looked like new, saving the cost of buying shoes. The distinctive black cat in the window and the smell of the shoe polish all made you know where you were! His little anvil and hammer as he tacked and sometimes sewed shoes while you entered made an impression on me: I was watching a tradesman do his thing, slicing the extra rubber from the soles he just put on a customer’s shoes.

"Shoes to set my feet a-dancing, dancing,
Dancing, dancing all the day.
Shoes to set my feet a-dancing, dancing,
Dancing all my cares away."
Then he tapped and he stitched
For his fingers were bewitched
And he sewed a dream
Into every seam."

You wanted cake, you went to a baker in a bakery, and when you entered, the smells of fresh bread and confections made you hungry and you bought more than you needed or intended to buy. You ordered your bread and he or she took it over to a slicer and in one mechanical motion sliced a loaf of bread for you, the whole loaf, all at once, wrapped in a white bag or box with red and white striped string!

These little vignettes were part of my life as a child, that I watched slowly disappear, into a one stop shopping place. Perhaps for the exception of shoes, you can buy all the above-mentioned in one store. Pretty convenient for one, but for me a little sad in a way, I miss those little things that comprised life as a child. Those little things in a way told a story of sorts, identified the shop keeper and his trade.