Memories The Grocer and others

When I was a boy there were no supermarkets .. there were grocer's shops.

They were usually not large shops .. but they were stacked to the ceiling with boxes and bags of produce.

They had names like Central Provision Stores (CPS) and Retail Grocers Association (RGA). They were all independently owned and operated and they knew all their customers by name.

Our local grocer was Henderson's in Botting Street Albert Park. They also ran the adjoining store which was a drapery and gift store .. and the Post Office.

There wasn't much that happened in our suburb that the Henderson's didn't know about.

In those days most things came in bulk so there were paper bags everywhere and old scales for weighing the sugar and flour and beans.

Grocer shops smelt wonderful .. with all the spices and dried herbs in little drawers .. and fresh vegetables and fruit in boxes on the floor.

The floor was wooden and worn ,, but continually swept.

There was a wooden counter with a huge silver cash register with the pounds, shillings and pence showing on little metal disks which popped up according to which buttons and levers were pushed and pulled. The sound and display of the cash register was the climax of the sale.

The walls of the store were covered by shelves and little compartments which held boxes of things on display.

There were no shopping trolleys .. they hadn't been invented yet .. and a good thing too because there was certainly no room for them.

There were no EFTPOS machines .. everything was cash .. although some people who thought carrying cash was below them (just like the Queen) ran monthly accounts.

There were a couple of wooden stools for people to sit on while they looked over their shopping list and called out to the grocer what they wanted.

Bacon was always sliced while you waited and then wrapped in greaseproof paper. So was cheese after it was cut using a piece of wire on a wooden handle.

Only a few shops had refrigeration. Others still used ice chests or underground cellars as coolrooms.

Out the back of our grocer's was the stable. Yes our grocer used a horse and cart to deliver groceries to your home.

On a Wednesday a chap who worked at the shop would ride around in his grocers white dustcoat on a bicycle. He knew all the customers and he would stand at the back door with his order book while mum went through the cupboards and the ice chest and gave him her order.

He always had a pocket full of lollies and each child got a lolly. Once, when we were on school holidays, five of us queued up for lollies. Then we raced to our mates house .. swapped clothes .. and lined up again. It didn't work !

Come Friday they'd saddle up the horse to the closed-in cart and everyone's groceries would be placed in a wooden box with their name written in chalk on the end.

There weren't many specials in those days .. but every Christmas we received a calendar with a pretty picture to look at in the toilet for another 12 months.

Some of the larger grocery shops in the City had a supervisor's office up on a raised platform so he could keep an eye on what was going on. Some even had the cash register in a little office connected to the counters by a series of overhead wires. There were little round containers that fitted into a socket. When you gave the shop assistant the money he or she would put the account and the money into the container ... clip it onto the wire .. and pull a lever .. sending the money rocketing up to the cash office. The whole thing was powered by huge rubber bands like speargun rubbers. The change was put in the can and sent back to the counter the same way. A modern miracle !

The grocer wasn't the only business to use a horse and cart.

We had ice delivered by cart. The iceman would carry a large block of ice in a pair of steel tongs. Without warning he would lurch through the back door .. then yell "iceman" .. lift the lid on the ice chest and drop in the block of ice .. sometimes having to trim it to fit .. so ice went everywhere.

Then there was the baker. During school holidays our baker used to let me help him on the bread cart. I would have to catch the bus down to the bakery then hide around the corner so no one from the bakery could see me jump on the cart. Then I would run my legs off all day carrying a heavy wicker basket in and out of houses. I got as many buns as I could eat .. a loaf of bread to take home .. and a shilling. Talk about child slavery .. but I loved it.

It's funny the things you remember ... I can still remember the smell of the horse peeing on a hot bitumen road !

I was made redundant when I steered the horse too close to a light post and ripped the mudguard off the cart.

The other horses which came down our street were the rabbit man .. Mr. Parr. He worked from a dray .. with all the rabbits under wet wheat bags. He'd scream out .. RABBIT .. OOHHH .. and women would run out with their hair in curlers or dusters in their hands to buy a rabbit or two.

He would skin them and de-head them on a little chopping board. He was a firm favourite with the flies in summer.

He'd wrap the rabbits in newspaper. I never heard of anyone dying from newspaper poisoning or from botulism from the non refrigerated rabbits.

Then there was the BOTTLE OOHH who had a cart full of wheatbags stuffed with beer bottles.

They'd be collected along with the wine bottles .. although there were never many of them .. and the sauce bottles. We stacked them under the tank stand where the spiders lived.

I think we got a penny a dozen .. for the bottles .. not the spiders.

But my favourite horse and cart came on Sundays. An Italian man used to sit up in a high little cart and sell the best ice cream you ever tasted. Shouting was beneath him .. so he rang a bell.

It was the highlight of a Sunday afternoon.

How he kept the ice cream from melting with just ice packed around it is beyond me.

I'm happy that is my finest memory and the last horse story from our street ... because in some suburbs they had the "Night Cart Man" ... who picked up the tubs of poo from the back of toilets .. and that's not a story I'd like to tell.

BOB PERRY

BANKSIA PARK