JUST IN TIME
The corner store
}} A neighbourhood institution
IAN McKECHNIE Writer-at-large
It’s a mild February afternoon 50 or 60 years ago. forget that Charlie Bucket, the hero in Roald Dahl’s Charlie You are nine or 10 years old and are making your and the Chocolate Factory, found the prized Golden Ticket way home from school after a long day. The ground in “a newspaper and stationery shop, the kind that sells is grey with slush but still you pick up the pace as you almost everything, including sweets and cigars”? Anyone who has lived in this area long enough can make your way towards the little shop a block or so away from your family’s house — remember, you rhyme off a long list of corner stores that once dotted almost every neighbourhood in the town of Lindsay. Families want to get there before it gets too busy! Reaching the store, you kick the accumulated living at the east end of Bond Street might frequent the snow and slush from your boots on the chipped D&M store at the intersection of Bond and William, while concrete steps outside and open the front door, its others might patronize Langridge’s store at the southwest oil-starved hinges loudly announcing your arrival. corner of Colborne and Adelaide, complete with its British Inside, you fumble in your coat pocket for a nickel Petroleum gasoline pumps. Bigham’s store, on Queen Street, or two ... or three. The kindly storekeeper glances was a destination for those who grew up in the east ward over the counter. He — or she, as is often the case during the 1970s and 1980s. — not only knows your name, but also knows exactly what you are looking for. After all, you were here only a day or two ago. The storekeeper retrieves a brown paper bag barely large enough to fit your hand in and proceeds to fill it with penny candy: caramels, cinnamon hearts, jujubes, licorice, red berries ... the list is quite long. Of course, it’s not just sweets that this store carries. Bread, milk, “delicious and refreshing Coca-Cola,” tins of tobacco — all could be found in the small, independently-owned corner stores that predated the emergence of chains like Becker’s and Mac’s. These stores became institutions in their own right and made their way into popular folklore. A generation of children grew up with Mr. Hooper, the genial proprietor of the store on Sesame Street. Canadian entertainer Raffi Cavoukian serenaded another generation with his lyric about “the Ross Fisher Sr. at the counter of Fisher’s Grocery in January of 1956. Photos courtesy of Wally Nugent. corner grocery store.” And who can
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