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Show GRASSROOTS Nostalgic Recollections of Old Rural General Stores By Wright A. Patterson i YESTERDAY I visited a store, as I do whenever opportunity offers, of-fers, that carried me back to boyhood boy-hood days in an Iowa village, in every detail it was the old type general gen-eral store in which I spent my pennies in those long ago boyhood days. And the store keeper -they were storekeepers, not merchants, were prepared to supply every human hu-man need from the cradle to the grave. Somewhere In their stock, they did not always know just where, were diapers, soothing syrup, paregoric, colic "cure". ! There were high chairs and trundle beds. On one shelf were "patent medicines," guaranteed guaran-teed to cure every 111 of man or animal to which flesh is heir. In a shed at the back was kerosene, kero-sene, axle grease and paints for home er barn. Included in that stock were coffins in which the people of the community would I be buried. Veritably every hu man need from the cradle to the grave. The stock of that Iowa general store in which I, as a sniall boy, was specially interested was its i stock of penny landies. I still recall j how patiently that store' keeper served me when I went to spend my one or two pennies. How many i I would get of this for one cent, and how many of that. I listened to it all, carefully and lfngthfully considered con-sidered each item, and in the end went back to the stick of striped peppermint candy, from that I could get more hours and minutes of pleasure than from anything else he could offer. Yesterday I headed for the counter on which the candy was displayed. There were the same varieties, including includ-ing the striped, peppermint sticks, but instead of one or two pennies a stick they had gone up to five and ten cents. The storekeeper gave me the same patient, courteous, attention I had received as a boy. Beside me stood a small girl looking hungrily at the array of candies, but evidently not having the five and ten cents with which to buy. I handed my purchase to her. After a hurried "thank you," she rushed gleefully off to share her treat with other youngsters. My love for striped peppermint stick candy has faded with advancing years. What an institution those general stores of generations ago were. They have been succeeded in many places by the more modern department depart-ment store. But the department stores lack much that made the old general store attractive. The. lack the disorder, the dust and smells. They are divided into organized departments, de-partments, with no searching for items you may want. This takes away much of the mystery and pleasure of buying r.t the general store of yesteryear. The store I visited yesterday, and do so whenever opportunity offers, is the only one that I know still operating. op-erating. It was part f an old western west-ern ghost town purchased by the owner of a big resta1 rant located a few miles out of Los Angeles, and removed to his restaurr.nt grounds for the edification of his patrons. The general store wa the c nly business busi-ness still operating in that ghost town, but it was included in the purchase, pur-chase, and the storekeeper was transplanted to tho new location. Without him that store would lose much of its interest. You can get a real thrill out of having him sell you things, especially if you are of the older generation that knew general gen-eral store in your home town. Just what source they have from which to maintain Vai stock it offers of-fers I do not know. The storekeeper told me he had been able to find replacements for all items, though there was no one source from which they camt. He had hopes of keeping his stock going indefinitely. It would be a sad blow to that restaurant, and its two to ten thousand daily patrons if he did not succeed. It is the only one of its kind of the thousands thou-sands that existed a bit more than half a century ago. It will not be, but it would seem a just retribution if MacArthur were privileged to tell President Truman to move out of the White House. Indirectly he might do that by his active support of the Republican Repub-lican presidential candidate. His influence in-fluence could be responsible for many votes. To prohibit the supplying of information in-formation to the people is the act of a dictator. |