Memories...

Last night while I was struggling to get 4 grocery bags from the car to my front door, I remembered that there was a shopping cart in by the elevator foyer. So with my fingers being pinched by plastic handles I crabbed walked to the elevator and threw the bags into the cart. It was as I was pushing the cart into the elevator that I was transferred back in time. Back to 1979...

My mom with her short natural and denim cut offs has sent me down the street to get an onion and some milk for dinner. If I went out the back door, straight down the alley and crossed the street on the corner of 39th and Nicollet there was a Red Owl Grocery Store. Red Owl was our neighborhood grocery store. This was before Cub Foods and Rainbow. Being a child and not responsible for grocery shopping, I'm not sure if there were other grocery stores. All I know is that when I thought of a grocery store I thought of Red Owl. If we weren't running the 1/2 block to Tom Thumb for Now 'N Laters or Boston Baked Beans candy we were being sent to Red Owl for whatever grocery item my mom or dad needed "right now". So, down the street we went, most of the time together or with our other "sister" Lisah.

Red Owl was much smaller than the grocery supercenters we have today, but it had everything we needed. Mom or daddy could send us right down the street for apple juice (remember the big glass jug), ground beef, bread, sugar, cereal, milk or dish soap and we would find it in one of the aisles. While most of our visits were on foot, for those that had a few bags and drove to the store there was a long, metal conveyor that snaked out of the side of the building, around the front and delivered your groceries right to your car. And you didn’t worry about the best way to pack the eggs and canned corn together because there was a young boy that bagged all your groceries.

The best part of the trip was that with every purchase you received dividend stickers. The more you bought the more stickers you received. We would then take those stickers, lick them and stick them in the booklets the store provided. It’s funny because while I remember the dividend stickers, I don’t remember what you received when you completed a booklet!

DING! The elevator doors opened and suddenly I was no longer walking back up the alley headed home with the onion, milk and a couple dividend stickers for the booklet we kept tacked to the corkboard in the kitchen. I was transported back to 2010 and needed to get the groceries in the house before my meat started to thaw.