Paul's Market

I remember as a kid shopping with my mother.  We had two grocery markets in town.  Neither was a supermarket as you might think of them today. Each one was on opposite ends of town.  Both were run by local people and each business employed adults from our community and several high school students part time.   The cashiers Linda and Ida-June always knew you by name. Or in my case, they knew who are parents were.  My mother was a loyal shopper at Paul’s Market.  Paul was the owner’s name.  He was old and eventually left the business to his son, Barry Jones.  My mother knew Barry Jones personally; she was the cleaning lady who would clean their house.  He was a very hands-on business owner. He would work the service window, bag groceries when needed or work the cashier’s register to avoid long lines. He really knew how to keep the store moving.  I remember at Paul’s Market there was no such thing as self check out or express lane.  The two check-out lanes served the entire store.  Paul’s market was located on north Main Street just a few blocks from the down town area.  It was an old building with aged yellow walls, green floors, and suspended florescent lighting. 
The store had a large meat counter that stretched across the back the back of the building.  All of the meat was butchered fresh.  That is a service you don’t see much today.  Most everything at my Walmart is prepackaged.  There are no slabs of meat hanging in the back of my Walmart supercenter.  The meat counter at Paul’s provided services for every thing from poultry, to pork, to cuts of beef and fresh ground beef.  It looked like red worms coming out the extruder.  They would weigh it and then would wrap it in white paper packages sealed with a strip of white tape.  Lunchmeat and cheeses were sliced fresh to order there. They would hand write the price on the package for the cashier to ring up.  There was no printer or barcodes.   I remember many a times buying bread and a pound of bologna for a fishing trip with my dad.  Or asking for chicken livers for catching cat fish.   
The store had hand painted signs on drawn on butcher’s paper in the window that changed according to the weekly sale items.  I think Barry Jones painted them him self.  It was our small town grocery buying place.  I remember shopping there with my mom.  Some times she made us sit in the window while she shopped.  We were expected to sit quietly and not misbehave.  The cashier would tell her if we did.  Other times she would let us follow her up and down the narrow aisles.  She would load up her cart with groceries and wheel her cart to the check out line.  In fact back home it was not a shopping cart; I remember it called a buggy.  Some times I will over hear an older person still call it by that name.  That reference always reminds me of my small town.   My mom would always try to get the most out of each dollar.  I too always look for the best value.  In my opinion, only an idiot grabs the first thing they see and buys it with out comparing prices.  Mom would watch attentively as the cashier rang up the entire cart of groceries. Prices were entered manually from small price tag.  There was no barcodes or moving belt.  She would always question a price that seemed incorrect.  After the end of the order, the cashier would announce a total.  My mom would already have money from her wallet ready to pay.  She would then do some thing that I thought was odd.  She would pay the money in cash, and say “put the rest on a ticket”.  A “ticket” was a yellow slip of paper that looked a lot like a check to me.  The cashier would write it up.  The remaining unpaid total was written in the small square box on the right side of the ticket.  It would also be dated.  My mother would sign her name at the bottom.  The ticket and register receipt would be stapled and placed in the cashiers drawer.  My mother would exchange polite” thank you’s” with the cashier. Then a young high school boy would help take the brown bags to our car.  That was his job. 
Yes, my mother had just paid part of the grocery bill on credit.  The store would hold the tickets until pay day. My parents would pay on the outstanding balance when they cashed my dad’s check.  Barry Jones, in the office, would add them up and take payments for credit purchases our family had made.   I was allowed to sign credit tickets when I was about 10 years old.  There were many times, my mom would send me to the store just to get a few things:  Maybe a loaf of bread or a pound of meat for supper, or a pack of cigarettes for my dad.   It was generally small purchases.  You can’t sell tobacco to a minor in Texas anymore. But it was ok back then, because the cashier knew my dad smoked camel unfiltered cigarettes.  Plus it was small town; they would have called my house if anything seemed fishy. 
I know now that my mother worked for Barry Jones, cleaning his house, because money was owed to the grocery store.  She would clean on her days off.  Barry Jones let her work off some of the debt my parents owed at the store.  My mother did this for many years.  Raising five kids was hard for my parents, but because of such arrangements, they managed never to be on welfare or let us go hungry. 

This building was once Pauls Market on Main street.

When I was in junior high, Paul’s Market moved to a bigger new store building.  It was progress.  It became just Paul’s with a big sign on the top of the building.  No longer was it near downtown.  Many of the same employees moved there too.  They offered a larger selection of everything and employed more people too.  The small market was a thing of the past.  But I still remember the original store on Main Street.   The old building would eventually because a thrift store and most recently an antique shop.  But about thirty five years ago,  it was the place I would sit in the window and watch the world drive down the street.  Or wait to see my mom peer at me as she rounded the end cap of each aisle. It was our local grocery place and I will never forget it.