There are jigsaw puzzles that depict a general store with goods displayed on shelves as well as placed around the store. A few steps into the door and you were at the counter. That's the way it used to be. “Well, hello there, Mrs. Stimer. How are you today?” The grocer knew all his customers.

Mother only shopped once a month. That was the way Dad was paid by the farmer he worked for milking cows twice a day and doing field work. Forty dollars a month and a tenant house to live in. We had it better than most in those dreary days of the Great Depression.

Mother would prepare her grocery list, gather up butter, eggs and/or whatever else she had to trade. She didn't have Wednesday's newspaper to sort through the ads of several supermarkets for sale items. We couldn't afford to take the paper. Anyway, there were few sales at the small store in the nearby small town. There was only one store, too.

Mother's list was short and basic. No meat. The store didn't have a cooler. No canned goods. She canned her own. A twenty-five pound bag of flour, a ten pound bag of sugar and maybe some baking powder, baking soda or spices. Salt came in either a 1 pound or a five pound bag. Oh yes, I almost forgot. We had to have coffee and a one pound bag of green tea siftings. Those two items were her only luxuries. She would take a bushel basket and a smaller peck basket to carry home her purchases. We never ran a bill. We couldn't. There was never any money left over as it was.

Mother would read her list to the grocer. He selected the items and placed them on the counter. Then he placed her groceries in her baskets and added up how much Mother owed him after he had deducted the amounts for the items she had brought to trade. “We'll see you next month, Mrs. Stimer.” She drove straight home. Gas was a luxury.

Before we leave, let's look around the store. Cookies were displayed in large cellophane topped boxes. There would be a row of them. You selected the ones that caught your fancy. Mother would allow me to have two. My favorite was the marshmallow topped shortbread cookies. They were sprinkled with coconut and came in a variety of colors. I would eat them on the way home, taking small nibbles to make them last longer.

Have you ever seen a pickle barrel? It would be filled with brined dill pickles, big ones. You bought them by the pickle. The only produce offered was dry yellow onions and potatoes. I guess they were called horse taters around here. We called them Irish Cobblers, or just plain potatoes. I didn't know what a sweet potato was.

When you go to Food City look over at the small shops in a row along the parking lot. One of them would have been the size of the store Mother shopped at. There wouldn't have been a parking lot. You parked in the street. That road got muddy when it rained. Some of the streets were paved in the county seat, but not in the small towns. And they call them “The Good Old Days.”