It used to be that your shopping was done at the local grocery store. Now you're lucky if you can still find one.
I grew up in a small town. The kind of town where the drug store still delivered to your door. The neighbors were still nosy and everybody... I mean everybody... knew your name. My father worked in the local grocery store, a small Piggly Wiggly that sat right next door to my elementary school just six blocks away from our house. It was small and simple, no fancy scanners or do-it-yourself registers. No electronic check machines or cashiers who couldn't make change. Just ladies in bright orange vests and package boys who knew which sacks to double bag.
Like I said, it was a small town.
Today's grocery store is anything but small, with its 92 aisles full of everything you could ever want to buy. There's no need to make separate stops - the Wal-Marts and Hypermarts of today have it all. From DVD's to CD's to clothes and makeup. Plants, pens, pots and playdoh. If you want it, chances are a super store has it.
Ironically, these super stores are actually just a larger version of the original grocery store - the trading post.
American trading posts date all the way back to the 1500's, when the United States was nothing more than unchartered land. Settlers used trading posts to sell not just food but a variety of goods that included cigars, clothing, furniture and the like.
As towns developed, the trading post stepped aside for the general store, a more formal and fixed retail establishment but one that carried on the spirit of the trading post by offering a variety of goods for the local consumers.
By the early to mid 1960's, general stores had made way for specialty stores, establishments that focused on only one type of merchandise such as sporting goods, movies or clothing. It was then that the grocery stores of my childhood really evolved, with chains like Minyards, Safeway, Brookshires and yes Piggly Wiggly branching out across the U.S.
Today, you can still find a few true grocery stores here and there, but most have been pushed out by the bigger super stores. And that's okay, I suppose. I like that I can pick up my groceries, my potting soil and the latest DVD all in the same spot. Its convenient and that certainly works well for our multitasking society.
But there's something about those old grocery stores that I still miss. Maybe its because they never smushed my bread, broke my eggs or sacked the milk in with the canned goods. Perhaps its because they knew my name when I walked in the store. Or maybe, just maybe, its because I knew where everything was. With only 8 aisles to work with, it was hard to get lost in the crowd.
Like I said, it was a small town.
Want to enjoy more grocery store nostalgia? Check out Groceteria.com.
