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Show THE CRACKER BARREL, Is the old time country store doomed to disappear? Traveling salesmen j who "make" New England, report that the chain stoTe is crowding out the country store in that section. This may be progress and an inevitable inev-itable part of the system and efficiency efficien-cy that are rapidly making life a6 mechanical me-chanical as au automatic machine. But the passing of the old-time coun iry store would belong with such hor rible events as the shoofing of Santi ciaus The country store was an important, social institution in the early days of I our country. On cracker barrels arouud lis famed box stove, grandpa met at the crossroads cross-roads with other minds of the community. com-munity. It was around that store in winter, or tilled back In cane chairs out front in summer, that all impor 'ant problems finally were "settled." That Is, grandpa and his pals supposed sup-posed the problems were settled The proverbial cracker-barrel philosophers argued and harangued about the tariff, tar-iff, the money system, our foreign policy, pol-icy, weather probabilities and the I price of wheat. Descendants of the cracker-barrel j philosophers today are discussing the I -amo problems during factroy noon hour, at club, at lunch, in the cellar While making homo brew. Same old problems, same old argu-! ments Are we getting anywhere" The modern city boy misses a lot in not being sent plodding bare-foot through the thick dust of summer to i he country store. I Many a farm boy walked five miles Lo that store, his heart purring with the hope that the storekeeper might Kive him a stick of the striped candy irom one of the tall glass Jars. The smaller the lad, the grander the store seemed. He wondered If a tarantula ta-rantula spider might be hiding In the bunch of baaanas which, all gTOwn ups will recall, were delicacies, i Alone one side, the farmers' wives I bought calico, ginghams and alpaca On the oJher side, their husbands, bar tered such products as fresh eggs. Tho dickering was crafty, the repartee snappy, even though most of the Jokes came out of tho Ark with Noah We look at business today, ponder its giant industries, its Intensive cam-l cam-l looks very complicated Yet tho principle of the whole thing existed back there In the cross- j I roads store the exchange of goods j ! and sen ices for profit or loss, de-ptndlBf de-ptndlBf on cunning and luck. An old joke had It that there was sand !n the sugar. Metaphorically, wr have the same thing today. |