The WRight Way
By Ron Wright
(Cazenovia, NY – May 2014) No play on words, but the old store near my grandparents’ home was called Nabors store, Nabor being the surname of the owner. It probably was built to be a store in the 1800s but just as easily could have been a converted home with large windows in the front.
In any event, a feast for the eyes for a kid back then. The candy counter was pretty much a glass box with all the delights awaiting purchase. Real penny candy and candy bars in the 5- to 10-cent range. To the front of the store was the hand-dipped ice cream chest. For five, six or seven cents you could get a one-, two- or three-scoop cone.
Black raspberry was a local favorite.
The candy counter area again was the focal point for a youngster. The old favorites included Snickers, Sky Bar, Necco Wafers and Good & Plenty pink and white licorice. The stick candy, single pieces, etc., were in the glass jars at that magic one-penny price most any kid could scrounge up or beg from Grandma.
My grandparents would stop in after church Sunday morning and purchase the big fat Sunday paper featuring the comics section. When you could stay at their house over a weekend, the Sunday afternoon was spent reading every feature comic strip in the paper to catch up on the latest exploits of imaginary heroes, family situations and silly jokes that took a while for a kid to figure out. My personal favorites included the Katzenjammer Kids, Mark Trail, Mandrake the Magician, Smokey Stover and Blondie (& Dagwood).
Grandpa enjoyed reading the comics while puffing on his pipe loaded with Half & Half brand tobacco and sipping his cup of Chase and Sanborn coffee – all available at the same store. You could walk “uptown” to the store in about five minutes, so we always walked there, leaving Grandpa’s car in the driveway.
So back at the store: The Nabor family lived upstairs. The elder was John, and his wife Rose and several other family members were involved in store operation. The main player was Vinny (Vincent). Vinny usually had a white shirt on with the sleeves rolled up and sporting a bow tie. You had to look good for the customers. All were nice folks who were very courteous behind the counter. The stairs to their living quarters were right behind the main counter, and kid customers always wondered what their “home” was like.
Opposite from the candy counter was the grocery side where you could buy loaves of Wonder Bread (with the balloons on the wrapper) or the hearty Roman Meal bread made with a course grind of various grains. The Roman Meal had sort of an orange cellophane wrapper so you could see what it looked like. The end stickers on the package had a Roman legionnaire figure you could collect and trade for stuff other kids had.
And the less interesting items were there, like Rinso, Oxydol and Fels Naptha soaps.
Grandma would trust me with a pocket of change, and I would often walk up through the backyards to go to the store. You had to stop about halfway during the five-minute walk and make your official count of the pigeons perched on someone’s barn roof. A tough job, but someone had to do it.
So you soon got to the back door of the store and went in near the meat and cheese counters in the back. You ordered the piece of Longhorn yellow-orange cheese that everyone liked, plus maybe a half-pound of sliced olive loaf.
Vinny would wrap up the items in brown paper off a big roll with a cutoff blade on it and wrap several turns of string around the cheese or meat. Then if Grandma needed instant Postum (coffee replacement) you could get that, too, as well as a box of Sugar Jets cereal with a cardboard plane cutout on the back. The aluminum wings were inside the box. The thing would actually glide after you put it together; right after World War II, jets were the thing most young boys were interested in (next to playing cowboys and having four-man baseball games with friends).
Getting back home, Grandma was proud that you had done a good job and returned the correct amount of change to her purse. No thought was given about a child walking through back lots and wooded areas back then. Kids were pretty safe on their own.
Ron Wright of Cazenovia is a retiree with keen interest in his family, history, politics and his church. He began putting his thoughts on paper a little over a decade ago to share with family and friends. Ron, whose column appears the third edition each month, may be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.