I wrote this a few years ago, remembering the corner store in my neighborhood when I was growing up. The brand names would be very different in the UK, but the store may seem familiar, anyway.

The Neighborhood: Simonsen's Grocery

Heading toward town from our house, the first landmark you'd come to was Simonsen's grocery, which was on the corner, a block away. It was a rare day when I didn't go down to Simonsen's for one reason or another. For starters, we didn't have a car and in the 40's there was no such thing as a supermarket, anyway. That meant that if we couldn't grow it, and my Dad didn't shoot it or catch it, most likely it came from Simonsen's.

For a small store, it seemed like Simonsen's had every thing you could imagine. At the front of the store, presiding over the cash register and the candy counter, was Ethel of the flaming red hair and stout figure. If you needed some gas, Ethel would go out the front door to the pumps and fill your tank with Ethyl gasoline. When my Mother would send me down to the store with a list of groceries and other household items, I'd dutifully hand it to Ethel and she'd wander through the store, picking up each item off the shelves, carrying them to the front counter. It was only in later years that I discovered modern grocery stores where you could actually take the items of the shelf, yourself.

Standing behind the meat counter in the back of the store was the butcher, Hal Simonsen. Hal's brother Willard owned the store, but it's Hal I remember best. He'd grind beef for you, or cut as many pork chops or steaks as you wanted, rolling off a huge piece of white waxed paper to wrap the meat in. When he wrapped the meat it had "hospital corners" a nurse would have been proud of. Hal wrote a weekly column in the Janesville Gazette titled "Hal Predicts." Hal wasn't much of a prognosticator, but he was always positive: "The Blue Jays (our high school team) will beat Beloit (our greatest rival) this weekend."

Attached to the rear of the store was a storage shed with a sliding garage door that was never locked. We'd slide the door open a crack and peak into the dark looking for treasures that slowly took form in the shadows. Hal would put the used peach and orange crates in the shed, knowing he'd never have to take them to the dump. The crates were our building blocks for all sorts of wonderful inventions. If you were lucky enough to spot a newly discarded crate, Hal would gladly give you permission to take it. It never occurred to us to take it without asking. Peach crates made wonderful scooters when mounted upright on a two by four wit old roller skates nailed on the bottom. Orange crates were slatted and didn't hold much of anything but oranges, but the soft pine slats would be used to build just about anything you could imagine. Ben Schultz, who lived across the street and ran a local delivery service made me a ladder nailed together from the ends of orange crates.

But for all the attractions of Simonsen's, nothing could equal the candy counter in the front of the store. It seemed like there was an endless variety of treats to suit everyone's taste. Just remembering the candy, there was root beer barrels, chocolate babies, snaps (a penny box of licorice tubes covered with white or pink coating,) Chum Gum (a penny pack of four-not-five sticks of gum that lost its flavor immediately and was so tough it made your jaws ache,) BB bats for a penny, Mason Dots, Black Crows, Ju-Jubes (purchased only in desperation or at a weak moment of indecision,) Heath Bars (Candy bars for grown-ups not considered sweet or chewy enough,) Cracker Jacks (with metal prizes,) marshmallow ice cream cones, Black Jack gum (licorice flavored and usually considered for adults,) Sugar Daddys (caramel suckers with snappy sayings printed on the wooden stick,) candy buttons on a paper strip, Switzer licorice, Mars bars, 3 Musketeers, Milky Way, Zagnut bars, Lifesavers, pastel soft candy (like thick frosting) in thin metal, shallow miniature pie tins that you ate with a small, flat wooden spoon, Jaw Breakers, Jujy Fruits, Forever Yours, Bazooka bubble gum (which included the lamest jokes ever invented, in Bazooka Joe comic strips,) A long stick of bubble gum with inches measured on the side, and the crowning glory of the whole counter, candy Boston Baked Beans in a jar where you took penny servings measured with a small bean pot: whoever bought the last of the candy (according to legend) got to keep the pot. I never even met a kid who knew someone who'd gotten the little pot. And that's just what I remember.

"And for a dime at the corner store, a kid could eat his fill."

On a hot Summer's afternoon, the kids would come slamming through the front door, all hot and sweat from a game of baseball at the Old Adam's School playground across the street. They'd make a bee line past the candy counter, looking for something cold. And there were a lot of choices. "Pop" came in a myriad of flavors and bottle shapes and sizes. Pepsi and Coca Cola vied for loyalties even back then, but the winner was more often that not Royal Crown Cola because the bottle was about twice the size. Loyalties also were tested with a choice of Hire's Root Beer or Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer. Squirt gave 7-Up a good run, and both Nehi and Birely's had orange and grape soda. The Birely's came in low, squat, fat bottles with a wide mouth and their caps were a requirement in any bottle cap collection worth mentioning. Dr. Pepper was there for connoisseurs: a more recent addition.

Ice cream came in an equally bewildering array of shapes. The ice cream cones were 5 cents a scoop. Shurtleff's, the local dairy, manufactured dixe cups, which were another favorite because underneath a layed of wax paper of the inside of the lid would be a photograph of a current movie star or starlet or, much neater, a photograph of army tanks, planes or ships in battle. Cho-Chos were a local product made of malted milk flavored chocolate ice cream on a stick. You rolled the cardboard cup between your hands to melt the ice cream just enough to slide it out of the cup.

Popsicles were five cents and came in the usual flavors, except for a brief, disastrous attempt to introduce licorice when I was in High School. We salted the root beer popsicles when we ate them. The wrappers were saved for gifts. Every once in awhile we'd go on a binge, picking up every dirty, sticky, ant infested discarded wrapper within a block of Simonsen's until we had enough to send away from something. At the time, it never occurred to me what a nasty job somebody had opening up those envelopes stuffed full of old wrappers. Dreamsicles were considered something special, They were orange filled with vanilla ice cream in the center. They never lasted long when a new batch came in. Popsicle sticks were wooden and could be woven into small rafts to float down the gutters in the street when it rained, or held between your thumb and second finger and shot through the air with a menacing whirrrr. We had many a battle shooting each other with those sticks, and if you got hit by one, you knew it. No one would have been caught dead making all the cute craft items they get kids to make these days from a bag of sticks you buy!

Jerry