Closing times
When I was a child—which was not all that long ago—the supermarkets used to close at 5 PM.
You could also get almost anything delivered, too: meat from the butcher, fish from the fishmonger, vegetables and fruits from the man with the traveling truck. Likewise, bread from the bread truck (which the driver once let me ride in for a block—a memorable occasion that involved standing next to him, since there was only one seat).
Milk and butter appeared every couple of days in a small metal-lined box with a flip top that was permanently parked on our side stoop. Even the drugstore delivered, especially prescription medicines if you were sick.
But only during the day. It all closed down in the evening, and banks closed for business in mid-afternoon. If you wanted something later, tough. Wait till tomorrow. And on Sunday, wait till Monday.
I don’t even recall people imagining the concept of an all-night grocery, and I don’t recall anyone wishing (aloud, anyway) that stores stayed open later. It just Wasn’t Done. I don’t know what year this all changed, but it was fairly early in my life, and is linked in my mind with the installation in our supermarket of the first automatically opening door I ever saw. Magic!
I’m a night owl, and so for me the fact that stores stay open late is a wonderful thing. At least, if feels like a wonderful thing. But I also know the price we pay for it.
I well remember the demise of the delivery culture. When I was young we had that metal box and of a morning it was likely to have milk, butter, cottage cheese, chocolate milk (in case I was good) and sometimes ice cream.
Then came the super-market and mom started buying the cottage cheese, ice cream, etc. from there because it was cheaper. Denied his high-profit items the milk man had to raise the price of the milk. And that was the end of the home deliveries.
I often thought that this was an argument against the super market. It took a lot less gas for one guy to deliver to two hundred homes than it did to have two hundred people out in their cars trying to accomplish the same thing. The milk man lost his job, the markets were inundated by women in curlers, everybody had to have a car, and we would never again awake to milk bottles with the little towers rising from their necks when the weather was cold.
I recall the small corner convenience store open Sunday mornings, closing, then reopening at 5 PM
for kids wanting a popsicle it was an eternity !
Our refrigerators had the tiniest freezers just big enough
for 2 ice cube trays ! So no popsicles at home !
People were slimmer in the smaller refrigerator days
LOL.
Great trip down Memory Lane neo, our supermarkets closed at 6 PM but were open on Thursdays until 9PM.
Our neighborhood also got visits from a “rag man”
( I don t really know how he functioned, if he bought old materials or what ) but the Rag Man ‘s wagon was
pulled by a HORSE !!! Us small city kids were estatic
a real, live horse !!! We would yell it out, “the horse is going by, the horse is going by” & then line the curb to watch this TV creature, the horse, going by in person !!!
I am firmly of the opinion that milk tastes better out of a glass bottle.
GB: Kroger sells milk in returnable glass bottles.
Nolanimrod: In the UK where I was brought up the milk floats that made the daily deliveries were electric (at least that is my recollection) so even more environmentally friendly (and that was in the 60’s and early 70’s).
I came from small towns, if I might be… a few years younger than you. So, on the curve, I sort of know where you are coming from. We always teased about them rolling up the sidewalks at 17:00, save for window shopping on weekends.
Your post hits it home for me. My illness means I am sometimes unable to get to the store, so having 24/7 means I get to shop when I can, not the double trap of when I can and when they are open. And, yet, I very much miss the simplicity. Never did have delivery, that I recall, which might have reduced the pressure.
Still… I’m with you, on this, sister.
This seems like an example of how unregulated competition doesn’t alway result in more efficiency. I think individual retailers tried to edge their competitors by promoting more convenient hours, but then when they all responded by doing it too, they had increased their labor expenses to attract the same sales revenue.
A world in which grocery stores are only open during normal business hours is a world in which women can not work outside the home. A housewife can go to the grocery store from 9-5. But these days most women are at work during those hours.
@ BurkeanMama, I grew up in the 50s & 60’s & my mom always worked outside the home.
Grocery shopping was on saturday or the
aforementioned Thursday night, there was always the corner store for quick milk etc.
In fact mom worked & did lots of detailed cooking.
Homemade chicken soup, every Sunday involved some type of roast that went in the oven Sunday morning. Veggies that needed peeling & boiling.
In fact my dad disliked spicy cooking which was at odds with Mom & us kids, so she had to often prepare bland
food for him & then a spicy version for the rest of us !!!
All while working a 40 hr job, we never ate out due to dads pickiness, except for Fish that we bought pre fried from the Fish Shop, for us conscientious Catholics on Fridays.
Along these lines I was excited when banks added Saturday hours.
Don’t forget to add what it was like before banks had ATMs and direct deposit.
You had no other option but to spend your lunch hour every week (or twice a month, depending on your company’s pay schedule) standing in line at the bank; and good luck if you didn’t cash your check before the weekend and the supermarket didn’t have a check cashing service which let you write out a check for more than your purchase.
Shoot, I remember, and not fondly either, one weekend when I didn’t get to the bank and lived off a roll of quarters!
Isn’t that how “Seven-Eleven” convenience stores came into existence? The supermarkets were open from 9 until 5, except Thursday evenings, and, increasingly on Saturdays — until 6 maybe.
“Seven-Eleven” met a need, for a price. Good for them!
MollyNH:
Wow, a great singer, I enjoyed that but I bet she grew up along ways away from NH !!!
This reminded me of a recent post by Captain Capitalism on his trip to Europe. He found the fact everything closed early, etc. to take a lot of effort to coordinate on his travels. Can’t roll into town to late or you’ll go hungry that night. The 24/7 world makes certain lifestyles possible as he relates it to the American bachelor.
Just yesterday, I was delayed in going by the post office. My little rural one is closed in the middle of the afternoon. Rather than take the extra effort to make my passing by on their schedule, I just ate the extra stamp on an envelope I wasn’t sure wasn’t overweight. It’s time vs money. I’m glad banks have ATMs. It was foolish to have to go by their schedule and then stand in line to boot.
MollyNH:
Nina Simone—grew up in North Carolina.
OT: things are very tense in New York tonight. Cops were out in force in my neighborhood, and they weren’t saying why. Has something to do with the double murder today by a black man saying he was retaliating for Eric Garner and Michael Brown: he walked up to their squad car and shot two cops in the head, killing both.
Mayor de Blasio, one of the chief instigators of the lynch mob, gave a press conference tonight. See below for the unprecedented police reaction.
>>54 You have to see the video Dozens. Dozens of cops turning their backs to the mayor as he walks through the hall tot the podium. And silent
Posted by: ThunderB at December 20, 2014 09:13 PM (zOTsN)
Here is the video apparently/
http://youtu.be/LKueC2o0mkI
7-11 gets its name from the fact that it was open from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm. Not 24 hours.
Beverly; OT, good for the cops! DeBlasio, Sharpton, and Jackson all have blood on their hands.
Even though they didn’t pull the trigger, their rhetoric makes them guilty for stirring up the hatred.
Smart people know that their words can have consequences; but, we all know those three aren’t that smart. They’ve been protected too long by those who keep order in society while they try to divide society for their personal gain.
Re Nina Simone, Neo for some reason I would have thought it was New Orleans. Such a plaintive quality to her voice in that song.
I remember home delivery of milk, and other dairy items. My mother kept on with the last home delivery service in the San Fernando Valley until sometime in the late 1970s – milk, eggs, butter, cream, yoghurt. The delivery man would bring it into the kitchen and check out the stocks in the refrigerator, even!
I was overseas for a long, long time, so I’m not certain when the grocery stores started being open extended to all hours – I’d been at military bases where the commissary closed at six sharp most days and was closed on Sundays. When I got back from my last extended tour in 1990, it was already established. Frankly, I thought it was great, especially for shift workers, or for people who couldn’t get away during the day to do grocery shopping.