MY FIRST LESSON ON BUYING ON CREDIT

This morning, I got two emails, asking how come I didn’t write my blog yesterday and they had checked twice now!! Wow, I  didn’t know I was in such demand!! I love it and thank you!! So, I started to write, and my old brain refused to work or come up with anything to say….not that I ever say much, except what is really nothing much more then drivel!!

If, I have no pictures to put on the blog to save me from coming up with something to write, I then go look at the downloaded pictures I have and something will bring up a memory or an idea. This little girl at the old grocery store, brought up such a story of a time in my childhood.

Seeing as I’m 65 years old, I remember these little old corner grocery stores where my Mom would send one of us kids with a grocery list of some items she needed. They had all those big jars of penny candy and this whole wall of bins, and in each each bin would be different kinds of cookies, which to a kid, especially a sweet tooth kid, like myself, it was like walking into better then a goldmine or maybe to a kid, I should say “better then a toy store” The store was owned by a very old man called Mister Reeves, and his store was at the end of our block and directly across from Strathcona School in Owen Sound where I went from Kindergarten through to about Grade 3 or 4.

The store was old, dark and creaky, and I can remember how good it would smell.  It was a sweet, yet musty smell.  Mister Reeves, was an nice man, sometimes he’d be a little impatient with me as I’d take forever trying to decide, what candies I wanted with my 5 pennies, gripped tightly in one sweaty palm, and moms list in another.

He wore an apron like the man above and if I remember correctly, even had a hearing problem, like the picture of the man above. The little girl however, looked nothing at all like the way I looked back then. No cute little red bonnet and white pinafore and carrying a basket!! I was likely a scabby knee’s and elbows, dirty and freckled face, little urchin with red braids and wide eyed, as what delectable treat I was able to buy with the money mom would always give me, to buy some wee thing for myself.

Back then, you could could charge groceries until the end of the month. I must have been in that store many times, before it clicked in my bird brain, and became aware of the purchasing arrangement. All I had to say, was put it on my mom’s bill and walk out!

So, I began to go into Mister Reeve’s store more frequently! I’d go in with the freedom of buying whatever I wanted which sometimes included taking along my friends and treating them too!!I’d buy a big box of new crayons and a book to colour in, I’d stand in front of those cookie bins and have Mister Reeve fill a big bag of those chocolate covered marshmallow cookies with a spot of jam in the middle. (They where and still are my favourites!) Only they taste 100 times better from those old wooden cookie bins !!!

A bottle of root beer, or cream soda, plus a few more of this and that, and I’d just say “Charge it” and would walk out with my bootie!!

Gosh, we women learn early eh!!

It was heaven….at least until when the end of the month came and my parents came in to pay their bill! Or maybe Mister Reeve called them, I’ll never know, but I do remember the red bum I got!!! Yeah….we got spanked back in those days, and it sure kept us from a career of crime and we soon learned what was right and wrong!!

I can remember also a real heat wave we had in the days before school let out for summer and our kind teacher sent one of the students over to Mister Reeve’s  store for 5 cent popsicles for the whole class!. That sure wouldn’t happen today!

Better days, great memories!!