From: “Bert
Richardson Memoirs,” The Heritage of Blytheville, Arkansas, Wade c 1973, pg.
12-14
Some things
I remember about the country stores: The candy was in large barrels. When we
went to the store to buy our bill of groceries, each child was given a large
paper sack full of candy. Sometimes it was all stuck together and we had to pry
it apart, but it was candy nevertheless. The first packaged candy I remember was
peppermint candy in a box. Each piece was not wrapped separately, though, and
it became a big mess in the warm weather.
The crackers
came in a large barrel. One would reach down into the barrel with his hands,
clean or not, and sack up the desired amount of crackers in a paper sack. They
were then weighed and sold by the pound.
Cheese came
in big round hoops. We used a cheese cutter to cut the size hunk we wanted. By
taking a guitar wire you could rip the cheese hoop in half and put half back in
the icebox, while one-half stayed on the counter for sale.
Pickled pig
feet came in barrels. You could get a pig foot and a few crackers from the
barrel for five cents.
We would
take prepared mustard and mix it half and half with vinegar to make it go
further in the store.
About 500
pound cakes of ice were put in the top of the big icebox where the meat hung.
The meat had to be sold fast, or it would begin smelling in a short time. We
had soda pop in the boxes with ice on them.
Everything
that was shipped to the store came in hoop barrels instead of cardboard boxes
like we have today. Dried apples and peaches came in 50 pound boxes. We had a
hook we could use to pull them loose so we could sack them.
Coffee came
in coffee beans to the store and were ground there with a hand grinder. I’ll bet
I have ground 100 pounds of coffee in one day many a time. We didn’t have
computer scales and had to weigh each item and figure its cost on paper.
We sacked
potatoes from 100 pound bags, weighing out 12 ½ pounds for a peck. Flour was
shipped to us in barrels by the carloads. The farmer bought it by the barrels.
I can remember selling eight barrels of flour to one farmer. We also had sacks
of flour for the smaller families.
Northern
beans also came in grass burlap bags. I have sold many a 100 pounds of northern
beans to one family. When the farm sold his crop and drew his first check after
paying his debts, he would stop by the sotre and load up with his winters
supply of flour, coffee and winter groceries. . .
