Community Centre At The Corner Store

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30531, 28 August 1964, Page 2

Community Centre At The Corner Store

the Women’s Editor] Sad the day if the supermarket, with its high-pressure advertising and cool efficiency, ever entirely replaces the friendly comer store. The 12 expert housewives, interviewed on this page yesterday, are welcome to their preference for impersonal service and bargains.

My custom goes to the little shop in our street, which sells everything from needles to nvlons and all the food I want, week-ends included. It is a kind of community centre where people and their needs matter.

We exchange pots of pickles; and the jams we make, recipes, tips for the trots and antidotes for things like stinging-nettle rash. There I have learnt the short cut to attaching lining to window drapes and how to make my strawberry conserve set And we have our : “specials.” None of us carries home a too-heavy load. More often' than not my carton of goods is outside the back door by the ; time I saunter in with the cabbage and eggs, bought as afterthoughts. In the ’flu season it is only a matter of reaching for the telephone and charging up an order. Recently I found a bag of oranges included, with the! compliments of the manageress. at a time when citrus: fruits were scarce. If there is no arrowrootl on the shelves when I want; some. I can be pretty sure it' will be there by the time my fan is ready for its filling. Forget the week-end meat, and there is no need for a Saturday panic. I'm only a dozen strides away from a deep-freeze unit stocked with steaks, pies and chickens.

Sugar On Sundays From our first-aid post over there, we can buy eotton wool and adhesive tape for emergency dressings. I feel smugly

secure when I run out of| sugar on a Sunday morning if; the need arises to bake a cake.-; I can buy up to three pounds J before mid-day or. better still.! eady-made sponge rolls, shortbread. biscuits or buns. So I'm a muddler. But my | shopping suits my way of life., just as the supermarket suits ! the woman with a budget, a long weekly list and a small child for the trolley. The fault is with me. My initiation to supermarkets | nearly five years ago. was aj shock and it comes back to me like a trauma. Bewildered With sunglasses fogged in .the high humidity of a Toronto summer, I walked slap into plain glass doors which' opened mysteriously to my ;tread. I jumped with fright

over the mat, lest they close again on me. and grabbed a! trolley for balance. There li stood, bewitched, bothered and bewildered in the biggest j “grocetaria” I’d seen, looking for one loaf of rye. The woman in immaculate; white and her name on a [brooch was not much help. ; She looked at me sharply i when I asked for bread. “We don't have it” she! -said. “You dont? Not any kind?”; “We certainly don't.” Persevering in the face of! a knock-back, I asked her; where I could find some i nearby. “Try Woolworths on Yonge.”, ishe snapped. I felt as if I'd! !broken the silence rule in a! ' reading-room. Strange Accent Tucked away between mod- • era department stores was the aging shop I was looking for. lit had scrubbed wood floors, ■high counters, dolls, ribbons i and paperbacks. “Some bread, please,” I said to the girl.

“What colour?” she asked kindly. “Brown,” I mumbled, looking for somewhere to sit Back she came with a wondrous selection of fancy brown braid.

My Kiwi accent had estranged me again. A mile away I found a bakery. Snatching up three loaves, I paid for them and left smartly without a word. That bread had to last us a I whil e. I stay away from supermarkets now. Tm afraid, out of r sheer revenge, I would yell like a hoyden: “Say, where :have you hidden the pepper today?” And that kind of compulsion would only be tolerated in the little corner store over the way.