Good things in smaller packages

A recent piece on the TV news confirmed my suspicions that some of the packaged items in our grocery stores were smaller with less content. The manufacturers have designed new labels for these slightly smaller versions and have kept them at the same or a little higher price. I’ve noticed it in some canned goods and even in packages of popcorn kernels. I wondered why all of a sudden I was not getting the quantity of popped corn we had been enjoying.

Sometimes I wish we did not have all of the standardized packaging that we have today. I can still remember the days of the one general store in a community. I remember it was a hodgepodge of products, some packaged and other in raw form. It eventually became the grocery store and then the multi-purpose store we know today.

From the earliest mud-chinked log cabin establishment to the brick emporiums of the 1800s and early 1900s, “the store” was a housekeeper’s nightmare.

A little of everything

There were soaps and spices, dishes, books, and dry goods on the shelves. Hardware and leather goods shared floor space with barrels of flour, sugar, and molasses. A cat on the cracker barrel lid was a common sight. Axes, kettles and pans were piled in corners. Shoes were loose in a big box.

The drug corner shelves were lined with patent medicines, sedatives, paregoric, turpentine, sweet oil and Epsom salts. Coffee, cheese and tobacco crowded the counter along with sheeting, shirting, bed ticking and cotton yard goods. Women who bought yard goods material had to hang it out to air before they started “making it up.”

Whiskey was usually out of sight, but not out of smell, in the back room. Pins, pens, paper, buttons, black silk gloves and palm leaf fans were always “around somewhere.”

A hectic shelf life

By the turn of the early 1800s, roomy frame buildings were making log cabins stores obsolete, and up-to-date store quarters were built with cellars cool enough to store cheeses, butter and eggs. However, new products were coming out all the time, and shelves and counters were as crowded as ever. After 1860 barrels of the popular kerosene added a new and distinctive odor.

Heating arrangements took up space. First there were fireplaces, then Franklin heaters and cast-iron 10-plate stoves. The pot-bellied stove, first used by railroads, came into store use when coal became cheaper than wood.

Every store had scales, usually the platform type. With various improvements, by the mid-1800s these scales with various sizes of weights could weigh anything from a quarter of an ounce to 30 pounds. Modern scales did not appear until 1900.

Big colorful coffee grinders became standard equipment after the 1860s, when coffee first became popular. There also was a sugar grinder to break down the big chunks of sugar.

Purchases were wrapped in “pokes” or “papers.” A capable clerk could manufacture one in midair.

After he had the desired amount of bulk commodity in the hopper of the scale — rolled oats, sugar, dried beans — he would reach under the counter and pull up a sheet of wrapping paper. He would quickly fashion a cornucopia and fold the small ends upward.

Then he would pour the contents of hopper into it, fold the ends over and tie the package with a string.

Before the Civil War cotton bags were used to ship flour and grain. With the scarcity of cotton caused by the war, New York traders who shipped foodstuffs down the Erie Canal sought something to replace the cotton bags.

Ten years earlier, in 1852, Francis Walle of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had patented a machine that cut the paper, folded it and pasted it with flour paste to make a bag. When cotton became almost non-existent, other paper bag machinery was invented. Someone decided that paper bags were a good place for advertisements.

Store counters were boards usually extended well out in front. This was so that women wearing hoop skirts could shop in comfort. In 1879 counters with refrigerators underneath came into vogue.

As more goods came on the market, competition among wholesalers grew keener. Suppliers began to give storekeepers all kinds of fancy fixtures printed with their advertising. An iron flag holder to hang from the ceiling advertised Day’s Soap.

A wooden bag rack holding a dozen different sizes of paper bags called attention to a specific wholesaler. Mustard maker Mulford gave away an eight-day clock, as did the makers of Non Such Mincemeat. Some companies gave showcases to house their products, such as thread.

The storekeeper accepted all promotional tokens gratefully and hung them on his crowded walls or set them on his cluttered counter. While the general effect was one of added confusion, at least the storekeeper could easily read the time and temperature and knew where to find certain things, such as a spool of thread or a cigar.

Today we find old general stores mainly in museums. However, there are still some general stores around in rural areas and they are fun just to visit. Personally, I love to grocery shop and have been known to spend twice as much time as necessary doing so. I used to enjoy reading the various recipes on the canned goods and boxes of pasta.

Now all of those can easily be found on the Internet. But it was so much fun getting all of this knowledge by visiting the general store full of anything including the kitchen sink. Best of all, I would be surrounded by neighbors and local acquaintances.