Composed by: Elaine (Wood) Greene/Jenson, June 19, 2002

As I was doing my grocery shopping in our local shopping mall, where everything is in aisles to be picked up and put into a shopping cart; with one whole aisle of nothing but cereal; I was reminded of the place where we got our groceries when I was a child. It was at Globe Wisconsin, owned by Linus Prock (his first name was pronounced lean us).

As you walked into the store, the first thing you saw was a big potbelly stove directly in front of the door. To the left was a long counter that went from the front of the store all the way to the back, with a swinging gate midway. Behind the counter there were shelves that went from the ceiling to the floor, with a metal track mounted at the top of the shelves. On this track there was a ladder with wheels that fit onto the track, which the clerk could push to one end or the other to retrieve the item you chose to buy that might be on one of the upper shelves. Usually the store ceilings were about sixteen to eighteen feet high. Most called for items, were placed where the clerk could reach them without the ladder. On the upper shelves there were wash tubs, harness parts, kerosene lamps, lamp chimneys, wash boards, and calf wieners (which I will describe later) just to name a few. Hanging from the shelves were hammers, axes, saws, brooms, shovels and lots of other equipment.

The most accessible shelves held canned things like vegetables and fruit, sewing supplies etc. There were very few choices of brands. If you wanted a can of peas you would have to tell them. They would retrieve it for you and set in on the counter. Flour and salt blocks were stored in the back room, where they would go get it and load it into your car or wagon (horse drawn) for you. Flour was in cloth bags, which was used to make many pairs of bloomers and slips. In later years they even put flour in colored bags and then they were used to make dresses. Although the poorer people use to make dresses out of the old white flour sacks that had King Midas printed across them. Their mothers would rub Fels Naphtha or home made soap on the print to make it fade and then they would lay them in the sun to bleach. But there was always the faint letters showing on the dresses.

If you wanted crackers they would go to a barrel and take out the number of crackers for you and you bought them by the bag. Pickles were in a large crock in the middle of the floor and you had to bring your own container to put them in. Candy and cookies were in bins. Candy was a penny a bag for all they could stuff in a small bag, plus they would give you some to eat while you waited. A big wheel of cheese was on the counter. It measured about three feet in diameter and would be about eight to ten inches thick. They would cut off the amount you wanted and wrap it. They would reach up above the cash register and pull the string from a ball in a wire basket that was used to tie the package of cheese with. Very often the string used was red, although some stores had white string. We also purchased sausage and bologna the same way and it too was cut from a large piece, wrapped and tied.

Large bunches of bananas hung near the cash register and I always thought they hung the way they grew but later found that they were actually hanging upside down. When they had bananas on hand you would tell them how many bananas you wanted and they would break off the number you wanted. I don't remember if we bought them by the pound or not. I believe we purchased them by the number instead, like so much per dozen; the way sweet corn is purchased today.

Cereal consisted only of the kinds that could be cooked. Oatmeal, cornmeal, Cream of Wheat, Ralston, Cocoa Wheat, Malt-o-Meal and once in a while they would have a new cereal like Barley or sometimes Rice cereal. When I was a little older they started stocking Corn Flakes, Wheaties and Rice Krispies.

Sugar was scooped out of a barrel with a big scoop and put into a paper bag and tied with the string above the cash register. Later sugar came out in cloth bags, in five and ten pound sizes. Those bags became very useful to the average housewife too.

On the far end of the store they had clothing, mostly overalls, flannel shirts and long winter underwear. Boots and shoes were on the opposite side with another long counter and there would be a short stool or bench where you could try on the boots to see if they fit. They too had to be retrieved by the clerk and then you tried them on.

Out in front of the store was a gas pump. The gas pump had a white top that looked like a huge ice-cream cone. Below that was a glass cylinder that had markings from one to ten on it. On the side was a handle that was fastened at the base of the pump and extended about five feet up. This was used to pump the gas into the glass cylinder until it reached the mark, indicating the number of gallons you wanted to purchase. Then the hose was put in your gas tank and it flowed out by gravity. At night they would chain the handle so no one could pump gas into the cylinder. They would leave the counter and go put the gas into your tank. They would then go in and write down on a pad all the things you purchased, they would then add that up, give you a carbon copy and put the slip in a book for you to pay for on check day (the day the milk checks came) which was once a month.

The cash register had numbers on metal that would pop up when they pushed the keys, but always read backward from the customer side of the counter. The customer always stood and waited while the clerk retrieved all the items wanted.

As I said earlier, I would explain calf wieners. A calf wiener was a metal device placed on the calf's nose with straps, which had some sharp prongs protruding out on it. The purpose being that, when a calf tried to nurse it would hurt the cow and she wouldn't let the calf nurse.

The reason I chose to wait until the end to describe this is, that this store was at Tioga in the township of Seif. Like the store I described was also a country store and all the people that worked there were country people. One day a farmer came in and asked the clerk if she had any calf wieners. Without really thinking what he was asking for, she replied, "No, but we have some good bologna." Since she was a farm girl she was teased many years about that. I really don't think they ever made anything that specified what kind of wieners you were getting. They were just called wieners.

[History of the Globe Store]