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During my early years from 1916 to 1936, my father owned and operated a general merchandise store, or what really could have been called one of the last of the country stores.
In the early days of our nation much of the goods and news from the outside world was brought to the inland areas that were sparsely settled by way of peddlers. These peddlers first traveled by foot, later by horseback and then via the peddler's wagon. The peddler's products at first were small necessities, such as spoons, knives, needles, pins, spices, and other small items that he could easily carry. Later, his wagon included pots, pans, patent medicines, flavorings, stove polish, beauty aids, candy, vehicle parts, and the like. It is estimated that by 1860 there were more than 15,000 peddlers in our country.
As towns and villages began to emerge along the waterways and the improved roads that were built, inns and general merchandise stores became a part of the progress.
My dad operated a feed store in Washington, D.C. during the first few years of this century which he sold and then purchased a farm near Henderson, Maryland. Shortly before I was born, he sold his farm and purchased a grist mill in West Denton. After operating it a short time, he traded it for a general merchandise store located just a few feet from the mill. About the same time, he purchased a home along the Choptank waterfront in West Denton. The mill, store, and home were all just a few feet apart.
The store was at the immediate northeast corner of the Denton drawbridge and the rear of the store rested on brick pillars along the river bank. They were high enough for me as a boy to walk under the store at the river's edge and then crawl further along under the building in the sandy soil to the front which rested on the ground. I often sat under this part of the building thinking or perhaps fishing or sometimes shedding tears after my older brother or sister had been home for a while and had departed leaving me rather lonely.
Some say that the country store went out of existence, for the most part, around the end of the 19th century, giving way to theirmost fierce competitors, the chain store and the mail order houses. However, many country or general merchandise stores hung on and it was into the mid-'30s before my dad's business had fallen off to where he no longer could make a living. He completely closed his store around 1936 and spent the remaining years of his life taking care of a fertilizer warehouse for Mr. E. T. Orme.
My dad's store was a two-story building with a connecting one-story shed or warehouse. The second floor had partitions in it and must have at one time been used for living quarters or for offices. My dad stored a few things up there but for the most part the second floor was vacant. The first floor, however, had shelves on all sides except the front, from the floor to the ceiling. There were long counters in front of the shelves with a walkway between them and the shelves.
The fronts of the counters were closed but the backs, facing the shelves, were open, making space for drawers and bins for storing flour, beans, rice, tea, dried fruits, sugar, salt, and other items not on display. On top of the counters were stacks of overalls, denim and khaki pants, jackets, and also showcases containing candy, small items such as pins and needles, and tobacco. On top of the showcases there were cards containing pipes and various novelties, and candy jars.
Also, at different locations along the counter, there was a coffee mill, a cash register, a wrapping paper unit with string attachment, a Clark's O.N.T. (Our New Thread) counter case full of spools of cotton, a paper bag rack, a plug tobacco cutter, a large cheese cutter containing a wheel of cheese, one or more types of scales for weighing grocery items and nails, and perhaps even a counter seed display case. There was not much space left on the counter tops, only enough at various intervals to wrap a few items and to set things from the shelves or bins when filling an order.
Customers were never allowed behind the counters, and that was so impressed upon me when I worked in my dad's store that to this day when I enter a supermarket, a hardware, or a department store I always size up the situation to determine whether or not as a customer I am supposed to go behind this display or that table of merchandise.
The middle of the store between the counters contained a pot-bellied stove surrounded by one or more chairs, barrels of various commodities such as pickles, salt herring, mincemeat, jelly beans, cookies, and crackers. One also found a seed rack; a broom rack, several sacks of potatoes, a case or two of eggs, and always a coal bucket and a spittoon. Almost every country store had an empty nail keg containing a checkerboard near the stove. However, my dad did not encourage the type of socializing and loafing that took place in most country stores and he kept his checkerboard hidden, using it only on certain occasions or when special friends asked for it.
The rear counter in the store was usually reserved for meats, cheese, and scrapple. We did not handle fresh meats, except for a short time in hog-killing season, and our meat selection consisted of such processed meats as bologna, bacon sides, fat back sides, hams, shoulders, ...
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The shelves behind the counters, from the floor to the ceiling, contained items arranged as nearly as possible by sections of things that were alike or similar, such as canned goods in one section, cereals in another, soaps and soap powders together, patent medicines, spices, shoes, rubber boots and overshoes, a few bolts of gingham, flannel or pillow and mattress ticking, tobaccos, kerosene lamps, wicks and glass chimneys, dishes, kitchen utensils, and many other items all arranged by similarities. Food items that were to be weighed and packaged, such as sugar, flour, dried beans and the like, were in bins under the counter on the side of the store where the other grocery items were located. On the other side of the store under the counter you would find excess items that duplicated those already on the shelves, for example, additional pairs of shoes, boots and overshoes, additional overalls, pants, and jackets, and some additional bolts of dress material and ticking.
Also, there were always items hanging on hooks from the ceiling, such as tea kettles, dish pans, pots, pans, funnels, lanterns, coffeepots,buckets, wash tubs, washboards, heavy iron skillets, scoops, slaw cutters, pitchers, and baskets. Near the front there was always a stalk of bananas hanging just inside the front window. At that time, bananas came shipped by the entire stalk in a tall banana basket packed in straw. The straw was of very fine texture, not like any found in the United States, and whether or not it was superstition or truth, I don't know, but we were always cautioned to beware of poisonous banana spiders that might be in the straw.
The price that the merchant had to charge for each banana was determined by the number of "hands" on the stalk. My dad would count the number of "hands," and use an average number of bananas for each hand and figure how many bananas the stalk contained. By dividing the cost of the stalk by the number of bananas it contained he knew how much each banana cost and how much he had to charge for them to make a profit. I can remmmber selling them for as little as five cents. In grocery stores or supermarkets today you will find bananas spread out by the "hand" but they are now sold by the pound. An average size banana today costs from twelve to fifteen cents each.
The shed or warehouse attached to the store contained hardware, farm and garden tools, kegs of nails, horse collars, horseshoes, harness, axe handles, shovels, stove pipe, wire fencing, screen wire, window screens, a kerosene tank including a hand pump, one or two coops of chickens brought in as barter, chicken feed, bags of fertilizer, egg crates for eggs as barter, coils of rope, an assortment of machine and carriage bolts, wood screws, garden plows, stoneware crocks, cases of Ball jars for canning purposes, and a number of other items too numerous to remember.
In a corner near the rear of the store, my dad had his roll top desk where his book work was done. There was also a safe for protecting his account books. He seldom trusted his safe for the storage of daily cash receipts. Instead, he usually carried this home with him each night in a bank deposit bag. He would make a deposit in one of the banks uptown about every other day.
Pictured above is the lot upon which my dad's store was located. The store building was torn down after his death and a small building placed there as a sub-station for State Police. The oil tanks and the corner of the old Pastorfield store are also visible. Traffic lights and gates at the bridge are additions made in later years.
It was in this setting that I was taught to help out in the store from the time that I was old enough to see over the counter until I left for college. Dad always opened his store around 6 a.m. and closed it at 9 p.m. except on Saturday when he stayed open until midnight. He had the store closed on Sunday but always found time to make a special trip to the store if someone came by the house and made a plea for some item that had been overlooked when purchases were made during the week.
From age twelve on, I was entrusted with complete charge of the store while my dad went to the house for breakfast and supper and perhaps for a little work in the garden. Also, about twice a year, during a period when I would be out of school, he would take the train to Love Point, on the Chesapeake Bay, and the passenger ferry to Baltimore where he visited supply houses and placed orders for supplies to be shipped later. He would usually be gone most of the week.
On these occasions I opened the store, managed it all day, and locked up at night. I endeared my dad for his trust in me to manage his store on these occasions and I did my best to be worthy of his trust. My mother never had much to do with the store but she would, of course, keep a close eye on me to assure that all was proceeding properly in my dad's absence.
Barter and credit as well as cash played a large role in the operation of a general merchandise store. A family might bring in butter, eggs, live chickens, or other goods for trade. These they exchanged for sugar, salt, gingham, candy, staples, or whatever they needed. The merchant then either resold these items to his customers or shipped them to dealers, usually at a profit, but sometimes at a loss if he had miscalculated market prices.
Keeping records was an important part of the process of operating a general merchandise store. This record keeping process was quite different from the records required and kept today. For example, my dad had the following system. If a person charged his purchases or credited the items brought in for barter, each item was recorded along with the price on a small sales ticket book page. The family also had a small family account book to bring with them when they came to the store in which the same purchases and barters were entered. Periodically, these ticket totals were transferred to a ledger and the tickets filed for future reference if needed.
When the customer came in to pay up, the family account book and the rn~rchant's ledger should correspond. "Due bills" were also issued to a customer who brought in items for barter but who needed no merchandise at the time and only wanted credit for future purchases. The "due bill" would be traded later for merchandise. The terms of purchase then were either cash at the time or pay when you can, with no such thing as interest on the unpaid account. I have known my dad to carry farmers on an account basis for a whole year without payment during the year. They would come in and pay up the account for the year after they sold their crop of wheat, corn, tomatoes, or whatever. I don't know how he managed to carry several customers like this, for he was not a wealthy man.
My brother indicated to me once that he believed that if my dad had collected all that was owed to him and had he not made some poor investments he might have been worth upwards of a quarter of a million dollars in the early '30s. As it turned out, he died penniless and still owed a mortgage on his home. At his death, the home was sold for just enough to pay off the mortgage. He was certianly trusting of his fellowman and softhearted to those in need.
Some of the things I remember the most about my experiences in my dad's general merchandise store:
... the times when I was responsible by myself while Dad was away on a purchasing trip, or at the house for meals;
…the "drummers" who came with carloads of merchandise (shoes, pants, and other such goods) in quantities, or sometimes with samples, quantities to be shipped later. They would bargain and argue with Dad until a price was agreed upon and a purchase would be made for resale at the store;
...the long lunch and supper lines that would form during the canning season by the cannery workers who were given time off to eat. They would call to the store for "a nickle's worth of cheese and crackers which we always had to ask the question "mustard or oil?", "a slice of bologna and bread," most of which were accompanied by a bottle of soda pop. Dad always wanted me there at those hours, and Mother also sometimes, as we would be quite busy supplying a hundred or more people with their lunch in just a few minutes.
The canneries usually paid many of their workers on a piece basis and as they completed each unit would either give them a metal token or punch a card that might have as many as fifty units on it. On payday they would redeem these tokens or cards for cash. Many of the merchants in the town, including my dad, would also accept the cards or tokens in lieu of cash.
[A] merchant pumped oil from an oil drum (in our case just inside the warehouse door) with a hand pump mounted on the top. We used either a quart or half-gallon galvanized container with a spout. Later, we began using quart bottles with a long screw-on spout which we kept in a rack in front of thestore. Since we had at least two grades of oil, the quality and color couldbe seen through the glass bottle.
We also had a drum of denatured alcohol used as an antifreeze in the automobile radiators in winter months. When the water got hot in the engine, it was a common thing for the denatured alcohol to evaporate rapidly, even boil over. So, it was a common task to add alcohol to the radiator as well as replenish the gasoline and oil. It was such a nuisance that many people simply drained the water out of the radiator each evening. If one did much driving during the day, however, alcohol was almost a necessity since on a very cold day the water in the engine of a Model T Ford would freeze up even while the car was being driven.
During the Prohibition Period (1920-33, which also corresponded to the time I was helping in my dad's store), I had many more firsthand encounters with drunken people than at any other time in my life. There must have been a number of sources of “bootleg” whiskey around West Denton. I knew several farmers who would come to town, especially on Saturday, find some "bootleg" liquor and get too drunk to get back home.
One fellow in particular was one of Dad's best customers. Sometimes he would come into the store, sit down by the stove, and upon getting warmed up he would soon be feeling no pain, whereupon my dad and I would help him into his buggy, prop him so he wouldn't fall out and head his horse toward home. The old horse knew the way and would take him right to his door; what happened there we never knew.
Another big fat farmer always came to town driving a two-horse farm wagon. He was likely to lie down anywhere, even in the ditch and sleep off his inebriation. Occasionally this lasted for a day or two and someone usually sent his two-horse team back home without him. Incidents such as these were pretty common on weekends.
Toward Easter, we always had a large wooden barrel full of jelly beans for sale by the pound. A scoop in the barrel made it possible to scoop up and weigh the amount wanted by the customer. By the time the barrel was half sold, I had managed to fish out and consume most of the black licorice ones. I never lost my taste for black jelly beans.
I remember well the night I accosted the town drunk for stealing merchandise from the front of the store. The upper part of my dad's store had burned and most of the goods on the first floor had suffered smoke and water damage. Since the Knotts' store was vacant at the time, my dad had rented it, moved everything that was left in the burned store across the street and was having a "fire sale."
Captain Waters, a sailboat captain, had bought a couple of wash tubs full of items and we had set them just outside the front door of the building. Captain Waters, my dad, and I were sitting toward the back of the store and from where I was sitting I could observe a part of the front porch of the store. I saw a hand reach around the corner of the store and grab an item or two from one of the washtubs. Again this happened, then again.
By that time I was on my feet and rushing to the front of the store. There I met the town drunk face to face; he was, as usual, quite inebriated. I grabbed him by the shirt and held on while I called for my dad and the captain. Dad found his pockets full of items that he had taken from the tubs, collected them all, gave him a good bawling out, and turned him loose while warning him to never set foot on his property again. It appeared to me that some items were still missing from the tubs so I began looking around behind the building and sure enough, I found a collection of items hid in some weeds. I recovered them, returned them to the tubs and then hid where I could observe the spot where the would-be thief had hidden his booty. Soon the drunk returned to the spot, surveyed the situation, and muttered, "That little x#!ox#!x (expletive) he's been here and found them.' I was a little concerned about what he might do to me so I stayed clear of him for a while...
...[M]y dad invented a unique way of catching mice. The problem with traps was that sometimes a mouse would get partially caught in one, drag it around behind a crate of barrel, and we would not find it until it began to smell. So, my dad would take an empty oatmeal box, cut a small round hole in the side of the box about an inch from the top, put a small bit of cheese inside the box on the bottom, and set it next to some canned goods on a shelf. The mouse would run along on top of the cans, smell the cheese in the oats box, go in the hole and down to the bottom to the cheese. Since the oats had made the side of the box very slick, he could not climb back up to the hole. My dad would hear him scratching around trying to climb up the sides of the box, whereupon Dad would pick up the box and shake it until the poor mouse was dead. The mouse was removed, more cheese added, and the box reset for another catch. It worked better than traps. I think my dad got a kick out of outwitting the mouse.
In season, Dad always had a wagonload of watermelons at the store. One of my jobs was to carry them outside to be on display each morning and back inside at night. After a customer had selected a melon we always plugged it to determine if it was ripe. I learned early how to stick a butcher knife at an angle in the melon on each side of a one-inch square and come out with a pyramidal piece that showed whether or not it was a good melon.
Most candies came in bulk and would be emptied out of the bulk box into compartments in the candy showcase (much like those seen at Sears and other stores today in the candy department). It was later that the wrapped candy bar made its appearance. At Christmas, Easter, and Hallowe'en there were many varieties of candy not available at other times during the year.
Candy would be scooped up from the showcase by the merchant and put in a paper bag in the quantity wanted by the customer. It was sold by the pound and by the piece. Pound prices varied from fifteen cents to twenty-five cents a pound, and for a penny a kid cou~d buy from two to five pieces. I did my share of sampling and consuming each variety, but I never learned to appreciate the pink and white striped coconut strips.
Cookies also came in bulk and were sold by the pound or by the piece. Dad purchased a rack from one company (Keebler, I think) for the display of cookies. The cookies from this company would arrive in boxes about fifteen inches square and ten inches deep containing about twenty-five pounds. The lid of the cardboard box would be removed and a metal frame containing a glass lid would be fitted over the box. The glass lid was hinged so that It could be lifted for removing the cookies, a more sanitary method than the open box. The rack held about twelve or fifeteen boxes of various kinds of cookies. These I also sampled at frequent intervals.
Saturday was always a long and busy day. The store was open from 6 a.m. until midnight and my dad expected me to be there most of the time. This was one day that I did not go anywhere without his permission. He especially wanted me to take care of the gasoline sales and the items from the warehouse. I would get pretty tired and sleepy by midnight and many times I fell asleep while still on my feet but slumped over a stack of pants or overalls, only to be awakened by my dad to take care of a customer at the gas pumps.
I always liked it when a customer bought a quart or half gallon of molasses. They usually brought their own jar and it was held up to the spout with one hand, while with the other one you would open the pet cock and turn the pump handle until the jar was almost full, allowing for a little amount that would flow even after the pumping was stopped. After the pet cock was closed, it continued to drip for a short time with the drip being transferred from the pet cock to your mouth via a finger. Yum! Yum!
I learned the merchant’s code system for marketing the cost and the selling price on his merchandise. An example of the code were the words CASH PROFIT. Under this code, if a shoe box contained the letters and figures SIR/5.25, it meant that a pair of shoes cost the merchant $3.96 and would sell for aboout one-third more or $5.25 (SIR being the 3rd, 9th, and 6th letters in the code words CASH PROFIT). Only the merchant knew his code letters and he quickly could look at a price and determine how much he could reduce it and still make a profit. This helped considerably if an item had been on the shelf for quite some time and the merchant wanted to sell it quickly.
Tobacco products sold in our store consisted of several varieties of snuff; plug, twist, and bags cf chewing tobacco; a number of varieties of cigars and also of pipe tobacco; and cigarettes. There were three major brands of cigarettes then -- Chesterfield, Camel ("I'd walk a mile for a Camel") and Piedmont. Old Gold ("Not a cough in a carload") were also introduced during the decade. Chesterfields and Piedmonts were packaged in two sizes, 12 cigarettes to a pack and 20 to a pack. The others came only in the 20's size. The small package of 12 cigarettes sold for 1O cents and the larger package of 20 sold for l5 cents.
My dad would open a pack and sell the cigarettes for a penny a piece for those who lacked the amount needed for a full one. I remember the plug tobacco cutter and how you had to guess where to place the plug under the cutter in order to cut a half or quarter of a plug for those who did not want a full plug. A variety of pipes were on hand, from the corn cob and the clay pipe to the more expensive rosewood pipes.
There is one more item that merits special comment. crackers. There were two kinds of crackers, the square soda cracker and the round cracker. Thesquare ones were larger than the squares found in the saltine boxes today. The round ones were almost as large and were creamy in color. They also had a sweet milky taste. They had a good flavor and I've often wodnered what happened to the "round" cracker; they have disappeared from the market, In the early part of the '20s they still came in barrels, but the barrel later gave way to the more sanitary box.
And speaking of sanitation, today's society is much more germ and sanitary conscious than that of the '20s. There are tales about the cat sleeping in the cracker barrel in the country store and Itm sure it happened, but not in my dad's store. In fact, he was pretty rough on the store cat if it even got up on the counter where the overalls were stacked,
I still remember, however, how little attention we did pay to sanitation, was no running water in the store and the only way to wash your hands was via a wash basin. My dad kept a galvanized bucket with a rope on it which we would toss out of the back window into the river and bring up a bucket of water. We used that to pour into the basin to wash hands whenever we thought they needed it.
But I'm sure we didn't wash our hands every time we moved from handling bolts, stove pipe, gas and oil, live chickens, and so forth, to putting cookies a couple at a time or pieces of candy in a bag or cutting a piece of cheese on the cheese cutter. I remember when bread was delivered and sold in its unwrapped state. Bread was delivered to our store via a Koestler Bread Company truck and I recall when they first came out with bread in a wrapper.
By the sanitation standards in the '20s we were as sanitary as anyone, perhaps even more so, but by today's sanitation standards the way things were handled in the country store would not meet with anybody's approval. In comparing an individual's average life span then and now, one can only conclude that improvement in sanitation standards has been as least one factor that has contibuted to longer life as well as to a more pleasurable one.
There are many more things about that old store that I remember, such as patent medicines, coffee grinding, coffee being purchased in the bean stage by the merchant in 100 pound bags, soaps and soap powders, and many things that for the most part have ceased to exist. A few of the same brands sold then are still on the market today. But I must conclude this chapter. Some of the values that I learned and carried over into maturity will be listed in one of the final chapters of this book.
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