Butler county Missouri,  Remembering the Corner Grocery


by: Martha Garner Albers

     When I was growing up in  Poplar Bluff in the '30's and '40's, 
the town's landscape was dotted with small neighborhood markets.  
Wherever you happened to live, that's where you shopped.  We were 
lucky to be a quarter of a block from the Charleton-Duncan store which 
sat on the corner of Ninth and Maud across from Ferguson Grove and the 
Sunset Inn, which was a tiny frame barbecue place run by old Mr. 
Cross.
     If we had lived a few blocks farther south, we would have gone to 
Jim Hogg's store at Ninth and Pine, or a few blocks to the east, we 
would have shopped at Mengel's Market on Sixth Street or Saracini's 
little store at Sixth and Main.  But as I said, we were lucky to live 
near a kind of 1930's Wal-Mart.  It was an amazing place!
     The Charleton-Duncan store had two distinct parts, and the side 
most used was the grocery section.  Two large plate glass windows 
framed the recessed front door.
     Through those windows you could see displays of good to eat stuff 
and the "specials."  Inside the door immediately to the left was a 
huge candy case.  It was of glass and oak, the glass front sloping 
back so you could see all the tempting chocolate bars, licorice, hard 
candy, and mints.  Glass doors slip back and forth on the back I 
supposed to keep flies and kids out.  Just beyond the candy case was a 
well-worn, all wood checkout counter.  There was Reginald White, whose 
wife Norma, ran a beauty shop in the upstairs of their house on Pine 
Street across from where Doctor's Regional Hospital is now.  I 
remember Mrs. Charleton, a tiny, efficient little white-haired woman 
with lively dark brown eyes, and gentle,  quiet Mrs. Forest who had an 
enormous goiter on he left side or her neck, which absolutely 
fascinated every youngster in the neighborhood.  Mrs. Charleton's son 
ruled the meat department, and that was it--no stockers, sackers, or 
carryout boys- just the customer and the folks who owned and ran the 
store.
     Just inside the front door was one of my favorite places- a big 
square furnace grate smack dab in the middle of the floor.  On cold 
days you could stand on that grate and let the warm air blow up your 
pants legs or dress and feel as warm and snug as if you were on a 
tropical island.  All of this side of the store was filled with 
groceries.  There were canned goods, staples (translated sugar, flour, 
salt, meal, grains, etc.- for the modern generations), eggs, milk, 
bread, and whatever fresh fruits and vegetables were in season.  At 
the very back was the meat counter.  It ran across the entire back of 
the store except for a gap on the right end allowing access to the 
counter and to a storage area in the rear of the building off limits 
to the average customer.  This intriguing section was the repository 
not only of live chickens and mountainous stacks of grain and feed 
sacks, but also at least three litters of kittens every spring.  The 
cats were supposed to deter an active and aggressive mouse population, 
and were an irresistible temptation to all the children living around 
there.  Every spring Mr. Charleton, whose reign over this area was 
unquestioned, would let me go into that musty, sweet smelling 
labyrinth of crates, sacks, and checks to look for a baby kitten.  If 
I could coax one out and manage to get hold of it, it was mine and I 
could take it home with me.
     There were no carts or baskets.  We would carry stuff up to the 
counter an armful at a time until we got what we needed.  We didn't 
load up like we do today for two main reasons.  Refrigerators then 
were a far cry from refrigerators now.  They were small and most had a 
freezer compartment that would make a modern mom weep.  Not only was 
the freezer tiny, it iced up unbelievably.  Unless you defrosted 
frequently with fans oscillating and pans of hot water steaming to 
hasten the process, you faced a miniature iceberg, impenetrable up 
there in the corner of your fridge.  So aside from a couple of ice 
trays, not much of importance was trusted to the freezer.  Another 
reason we limited the amount we bought was that food was not available 
in the neatly packaged and dated containers we see today.  if you 
wanted fried chicken for supper, you bought a chicken, a live one, and 
carried it home where some luckless soul got stuck with either 
wringing its neck or chopping its head off, which I thought wasn't 
much worse than the awful job of plucking its feathers.  So most 
people didn't wag more than one chicken home at a time for obvious 
reasons.  Incidentally, the cash and carry aspect worked this way.  
The hapless chicken's legs were tied together with a piece of brown 
twine, and the squawking, flapping bird was handed to you to carry 
home.  Fortunately, we did not have to drag a cow home if we wanted 
beef for dinner.  Mr. Charleton would take whatever meat you selected 
out of the refrigerated glass case, cut off the amount you needed, 
wrap it up with white string, mark the price, and send you on your 
way.  Thus, our almost daily treks to the story, but not just for 
groceries.
     The most fascinating part of this market, except for the kitten 
mill in the back, lay on the other side.  This half of the store had 
everything!  It was a combination Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, and Ace 
Hardware.  You could roam aisles stacked with  "dry goods," i.e. 
fabrics, counters with every size nail, bolt, nut, screw imaginable, 
plus hammers, saws, shovels, axes, awls, scythes, horse collars and 
shoes, brooms, buckets, cane fishing poles, thread and needles, dress 
patterns, and toys--for starts.  There was an endless vista of things 
to look at, handle, play with, and wish for.
     Last of all, which was really first of all also, was the smell of 
that store.  How could an aroma so familiar and constant be so hard to 
describe?  It was a fragrant combination of all that was 
there--pungent but not overpowering or offensive.  It was a musty 
sweetness produced by the old oiled wood floors, the sacks of potatoes 
and grain stacked around, and the bins of fruits and vegetables.  It 
was the smell of another era, one we seldom if ever experience now, 
but if I should ever get a chance to walk into an old time market 
again, I bet I would recognize that wonderfully familiar fragrance of 
the past.
     According to Paul Hogg, Raymond Hogg's brother, the 
Charleton-Duncan Store became "Piggie Hogg's Market" in the early 
'40's.  Raymond Hogg owned and operated the store until about 1965.  
The building still stands at the corner of Ninth and Maud.

submitted to Butler County site by co-host Mary Collins - mcollins@pbmo.net -
March 28, 1999