At The Store

My parents had a grocery store on Pell Street. It was retail and wholesale, selling to the restaurants in the neighborhood. My sisters and I worked in the store starting from a very young age. The store sold American food products like Wonder Bread, Budweiser Beer and Campbell soup but only Chicken Noodle and Cream of Mushroom. It also sold Chinese items, like dried lychee nuts, soy sauce and shark’s fin. And it was clearly divided. The sides of the store held the Asian goods. The shelves down the center had the other. It was considered a dry goods store, carrying very little perishables. Only fruit - apples and oranges at that, showcased in the front window.. There would be the seasonal fruit, like cherries, plums and fresh lychee nuts which always had the Caucasians coming in to ask about them…”Are these strawberries?”…If only I had a nickel for every time that question came up!

At age five, I was stocking the shelves. I don’t recall how old I was when my mother thought I could handle the register. But she taught me how to make change by counting backwards from the total cost to the amount of money given to me. To this day, I know how to do that and am amazed when a check-out person can’t give change if something happens to the register and she can’t read the amount to give back to the customer. It becomes a crisis! And I was taught to always say “Thank you” after a purchase. Something you rarely hear these days! (Uh-oh…sounding old)

For the restaurants, among other things, there were 100 pound bags of rice in burlap. When a new shipment came in, it would be piled to the ceiling. As the bags were delivered out to restaurants, the pile would lowered to a height that made for a comfty “couch” for the ones who were stuck in the store. (Kathy and I took turns working there.) I would lounge there reading my Archie or Betty & Veronica comic books. I can still see my father hefting a bag over his shoulder and delivering it out the door. A hundred pounds as if it were a 10 pound sack of potatoes. This is Dad by the register (circa 1963).



Growing up, it was pretty awful to have to be stuck in the store. Sundays were the worst. That’s when old men would come and just sit on the short wooden stools we had in the corner and hang out reminiscing about old times. The customers would be people that came from out of town, their one day off to pick up supplies. I still remember the phenomenon of Ramen noodles. We had been selling them for awhile when suddenly college students ‘discovered’ this cheap eats and would come in on Sundays picking up cartons of it.

On the other hand, Saturdays were the best days. In the evening, my dad would send me out to get the Sunday News and maybe a new comic or two. The summer nights were really good. I would have a girlfriend, Winnie or Susie with me and we would roam around a bit before I had to head back to the store but this was when I was much older…like 10 or 11!

Busloads of tourists would fill the streets and when they spotted my sister and I playing outside of the store’s stoop, we were sooo cute apparently, that they would take photos of us. We would stand dutifully and smile into the camera. I wonder now how many homes have our images in their dusty photo albums from the 1960’s? The photo below was shot in the store by a NY Times photographer (dated July 1962)