Top of the Shops

Before malls became the main way to shop, every suburb had a small strip of shops, most having no particular appeal to children, except perhaps the candy counter at the delicatessen*

I grew up in the time just before supermarkets were particularly 'super.'  Rather, they were boring places with checquered linoleum floors were you bought non-perishables that were packed into large brown bags.   Meat and vegetables still had their own shops.  

Butcher shops were always fun, because butchers were always so damned happy and whistled a lot.  Presumably, hacking through bones all day with a cleaver is a great de-stressor.  Cheery chaps in striped aprons strode a sawdusted floor to add fake green ivy to their displays of meat, and no child left the shop without a free fat slice of of fritz**

Next-door was the greengrocery, a darkish store that always smelled of stale cabbage.  Shoppers would tell the  proprietor what fruit and vegetables they wanted, but the owner would fill the bag for them -  none of this ‘choose your own’ caper, folks.  The brown bag would then closed with a three-spin twist.   Into the string bag it went, as we headed on to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. 

Pharmacies were always mysteriously quiet, and the pharmacist took forever to dispense your prescription, to be sure you had time to browse their range of over-priced goods.  To be fair though, most prescription items then weren’t ready-packed, much less blister-packed.  The pharmacist would measure out the tablets into a container, or mix and a bottle a syrup from scratch.    You’d know your order was close to ready when you heard the clatter of the typewriter as Mr Pharmacist (it was always a Mr - no female pharmacists in these parts in the 70s!) prepared the label for your “Chest Elixir” or “Indigestion Tablets” or “Ipecac and Squills” ... whatever exotique concoction it might be.

And then we headed home, passing the hairdressing salon, peering in at women having their hair coiled around rollers or perming rods (a perm or a 'set' was more common then than a cut or colour).  At the back of the salon (which would usually have a pretentious French name or a French woman’s name) would be a row of women reading magazines as they sat under hairdryers that looked like enormous hardboiled eggs.

If we’d been very, very good, we’d be given a small coin to feed the into one of the dispensing machines in front of the delicatessen: a gobstopper perhaps, or for a little more, a tiny little useless toy.    A boy would be lucky to get a teeny-tiny little paratrooper figurine with a papery/plasticky “parachute” attached to it with strings; the best a girl could hope for was a garish ring with an adjustable band (that generally broke after just one adjustment)

I just realised something as I wrote the last paragraph: the condition of getting a treat was that we’d displayed good behaviour during the outing.   These days, children seem to feel they’re entitled to these treats, and parents often give them not only freely, but even to ‘shut the kid up’ if they whine for it.    And, sad to say, I think a lot of modern kids would scoff at the fact we were so easily pleased by a dicky little toy, a Freddo Frog or little bag of mixed candy.

 

 

*  Delicatessan (subject of a future blog) = corner store/candy store

**  Fritz is a.k.a. Baloney or Devon