A Family Owned Store and Six Children

A bag of penny candy

I guess as you get older you have a tendency to think back to your childhood days more and more.  Yesterday I was thinking about a family owned grocery store that my mom used to order our groceries from.  I was remembering how kind the family who owned the store was to all of us.  My mom would call Schaffsteins Market on Friday morning with a grocery list from their store.  It was a small family owned store with a butcher shop.  This was back in the day when you would call an order in, they would prepare it, package it and drive it to your home.  Imagine that!  It's hard to imagine that in this day and age.

Anyway, the lady's name was Rose and she was so kind and sweet to us.  She usually delivered the groceries sometime in the afternoon on Friday and always included a brown bag of penny candy for all of us kids.  At that time, there were 6  or 7 of us and she always had enough candy in the bag for each of us to have 4 pieces of each kind of candy she put in the bag.  I was usually the one who separated it into piles and made sure everyone got the same amount.  It was a real treat and something we looked forward to every Friday.  She never charged my parents a penny for the candy, she just wanted us to have it.  Of course, we waited with baited breathe for her to pull into the driveway in her station wagon and would help her bring in all the bags she had gotten together for my mom.  She always took the time to ask each of us how we were and what we were up to. Her goodness showed in her smile and she would usually pat us and tell us she would see us the next week.  Usually, my dad would stop by there on Tuesdays and Thursdays on his way home from work if we needed an extra gallon of milk or a loaf of bread (which we always did) throughout the week.  Back then, everybody knew everybody and Rose and my dad had gone to school together in a one room school that they had to walk three miles to.  (I believe back then every parent told their kids they had to walk three miles a day in the cold and snow.)  HAH  We also had an account with them and paid up at the end of every week.  Nowadays, I doubt if any store would let you do that.

I often think of her and wonder if she ever knew just how much that little bag of candy meant to us.  In the summer months and as hot as it would get, we would walk a 1/4 mile down the road with our cane poles on our backs to fish under an old bridge and after we had been their about an hour, my brother would ask "why don't you run home to see if the grocery lady has come."   I always did...without question because after all I was the one who separated it and made sure we all had the same amount.  HAH   Funny how such a small thing seems like such a big thing now...