Scott's Store
Granddaddy Scott owned a country store, a quaint setting where shopping was
uncomplicated the offerings included sweet milk, fresh loaf-bread, pure cane
sugar, plus assorted canned goods. It was where Sis Dillard brought her
children every weekday to get a snack, pick up a few staples, and share the
continuously changing neighborhood news.
Displayed inside an antique glass counter, protected with a wooden drop-down
door, were the gigantic cookies, a plethora of penny candies, various flavors of
chewing gum, and more Bazooka Bubble Gum than could be consumed in a month.
There was no need for a shopping buggy, he stacked your choices on a worn wooden
counter, added the purchases in his head, and secured the items in a brown paper
sack.
Visit a supermarket today and you are inundated with more choices than items
displayed in an old-fashioned Sears Roebuck catalog; that was not the case at
Scott's Store; there were no complicated decisions.
Granddaddy stocked one kind of sweet-milk, one color of sugar, and a solitary
brand of canned tomatoes; purchases were remarkably simple. The only brand of
cheese arrived in a round wheel, was sealed with a thick red rind, and stored
under a heavy glass dome; each order was hand-carved with a hefty butcher
knife. There was no bakery department, produce isle, or pharmacy center; he
probably never heard the word delicatessen.
Everyone might not declare it as the good old days, but life certainly was
simpler.
