Chapter Five

 

THE STORE

 

"The Street," Two Pennies, Exaggeration,

a "Different Time"

 

          My travels while in the Army took me to numerous places in this country and abroad, but I have never run into a locality other than New Haven where its residents referred to its town nucleus as "The Street."  As children and young adults, when we wished to designate our intended destination as anywhere within half a mile of the town's civic center, we would say that we were going "up to The Street."  Our friends north of town came "down to The Street."  Hence our use of "the street" was in no sense as of a thoroughfare but as a general locality.

 

          Local historians will have an explanation for this, I'm sure, or dismiss the triviality of it entirely, but I mention it to illustrate the kind of ruminations octogenarians like me go through when they turn their minds to recalling the past.

 

          "The Street" held great significance for us boys because of the institutions that were located there in our formative years: the school, the library, the town hall and Charlie Everest's general store.  I include the latter because at that place and in those times it had institutional status.  It was not just as a place to make purchases, but to trade news and gossip, to sit down and have a game of checkers, to trade information or tell lies about weather, animals, neighbors or politics.

 

          It was a natural meeting place because dairymen habitually stopped at the store on their way back from New Haven Junction where they took their milk to the consolidated creamery, the "Milk Plant."

 

          Traveling nowadays in Vermont, one encounters any number of tourist-inducing "Country Stores" which feature patriotic trivia and counterfeit horehounds, ribbon candy and related paraphernalia; but nothing I have tasted since boyhood has equalled the wonderful-terrible addictive tang of a genuine Charlie's horehound drop.

 

          He displayed them at kids' eye level in a glass showcase and you could get a fistful for a penny.  Ribbon candy came in multiple colors and flavors and eating it might loosen a "baby" tooth or two and leave little boys with sticky fingers and faces but it was a holiday favorite.

 

          The candy counter was long enough to accommodate five or six elementary school students and Charlie would patiently wait while each, with pennies in hand, would agonizingly peruse the stock and eventually make a selection.

 

          Why, seventy-odd years later, would I recall the time when having two pennies I thought to buy an additional candy cane for the little girl in the next seat at school?  However, during the hot and dusty walk from the store, the candy melted in my sweaty fingers and stuck to my hands and there was no way I could present it to her without awkward embarrassment, so I ate them both.

 

          The store was in two sections.  In the front part was the candy counter, foodstuffs, canned and fresh, bread, flour, sugar, salt, molasses, vinegar (at one time I faintly recall, some of these were sold in bulk) and a variety of supplies to operate a farm kitchen.  I seem to remember, too, bedding, overalls, mousetraps and shoes as well as the basic materials for sewing and mending.

 

          The back half of the store was the men's domain.  In its center was the big pot-bellied stove with a coal scuttle and a spittoon at its base; by the stove, near enough to roast a person's one side or the other in winter, was a table and checker board with armed chairs on either side.  In the back room were stored and displayed items for the use of man: straw hats, rubber boots, overalls, barn brooms, paints, oils, pitchforks, and other necessities of rural living that I cannot entirely recall.

 

          Tobacco chewing and spitting were common among farmers at the time but abhorrent to the women so it was practiced mostly in the barn and fields and sometimes around Charlie's stove where a miss at the spittoon would cause an audible hiss from the stove.  We boys, of course, had to give a try to tobacco chewing too, but only in our place of refuge where we tried out all hazardous and forbidden things: way out behind the barns.  In this instance one swallow was as good as a broken arm -- we were not tempted again for a lifetime.

 

          At the store there was a big porch extending along the front and the side toward the town hall.  Old men past their prime would sit there and gossip, tell lies and observe the passersby.

 

          It was at Charlie Everest's store in my early teens that I first consciously perceived a singular characteristic of the men of that place and time: they would narrate tall stories and jokes with completely straight faces and elicit similar expressions from their audience.  It seemed inherent in their cultural practice that the telling of the most outrageous exaggeration or lie could not be sullied by responses of laughter or expressions of disbelief.  Rather, the response would be, "Aee-yah, that reminds me of the time ---"

 

          Sometimes, involved and rather cruel pranks were designed and played out anonymously.  Dad could recall any number of them.

 

          In his time there lived in the village a young man of limited acumen who, when given a command would involuntarily obey.  One time they invited him down to New Haven Junction to meet the incoming train from Burlington carrying a friend returning home after an extended visit.  When he descended from the train and set his straw suitcase down on the platform and turned to greet his friends the instigators, hidden from sight, directed the innocent young man to go and kick a hole in the side of the suitcase.  This he promptly did to their great and enduring amusement. 

 

          It was a different time.