It’s not Mom and Pop anymore….
While the model for grocery store shopping wasn’t started in the 60’s, our little mico-chasm (pun intended) of suburbia was certainly a model for how the times they were a-changing.
As I said, we had a small mom and pop store at the corner. Two aisles: limited selection, limited stock. It was not unheard of that you would return a can that expired months before. He considered himself a butcher, but I never met anyone who was impressed with his steaks. And his meat prices were unusually high.
There was a huge Acme store in the heart of downtown, but that was a half hour away and parking was silly.
When you hear the words ‘the grocery store’s a super-mart’ in “The Beat Goes On,” realize that’s not just a stupid rhyme. Our area was changing and re-arranging.
Somehow the same architect build three shiny supermarkets within driving distance of us. All steel and glass, three stories high. Like nothing you had ever seen before, but it fit with our new American attitude and modern way of thinking. I think all three are still standing. One was at the end of another entirely new structure called a ‘strip mall’. All were roughly twenty minutes away; I know at least one was a Food Fair, dunno about the others.
Now think about this: You’re used to shopping in one story buildings, maybe wood floors, two or three aisles……..now you walk into this glass palace infused with sun, ceilings where eagles could nest, and eight or nine aisles longer than you’d ever seen. As Donald Fagen sang, they had ‘the right dynamic for the new frontier.’
Riding their shopping carts lasted maybe two years until A&P built a huge store around half a mile from the aforementioned museum. This store wasn’t made of glass and steel, the outside was not ‘cool’. But inside, it was unique. In mid-store, there was a huge hole in the floor. Not for stairs, but for a large conveyor belt that carried boxes from the storage below. Oh, to have ridden that clanking, noisy menace just once, I could have died happily then and there. As you can guess, this gave the store added length over the steel/glass, as the shopping space was not cut off by storage in the back.
In those days, they tried to lure you by more than sales. The smart big shots saw the way my parents’ generation was spitting out babies and offered sets of books. Animal books, history books, American geography, everything but Playboy centerfolds.. First volume was 50 cents, subsequent volumes a buck. I remember one set had animal stickers you had to buy each time. Another set covered Presidents. And of course, one of the encyclopedia companies got involved, but we already had a dust covered set of Britannicas.
All this was great for young minds just discovering the joys of reading, so when my eyes sparkled at the sight of a colorful new end-of-aisle display, mom was a willing buyer. Being a teacher, she was no fool–can’t pass on a chance to get me interested in reading at a young age. Especially since her husband would gladly tell people he didn’t read books.
Next time: Television, my best buddy