Purdy street grocery was a mom-and-pop store owned by my husband’s family when he was a child. I have always loved hearing his stories about the store, and I thought I would pass on some interesting tidbits from the past.
The store was located on Purdy Street in Sumter, SC. At that time in the early 60s, it was considered to be on the outskirts of town. A railroad track ran in front of the house where they lived, and not too far down the track was the Lawson Coffee Company.
My husband’s father worked there during the day while his mother worked at their store in the daytime along with an aunt who lived down the street. Every day when my husband came home from school, his aunt would serve him up a slice of bread in a bowl and pour sweetened condensed milk on top. That was his snack (and he wonders why he is a diabetic now).
The Brown family sold a variety of canned goods as well as fresh hog head cheese, bologna, souse meat, and pickled eggs and pig’s feet. They sold slices of bread for the coffee company workers who would come there for lunch and eat the cheese and meat in a sandwich. They had grown up during the Great Depression and were used to eating just about anything.
Now, as a northerner in most of my childhood, I had never heard of this kind of food before, and my husband had to tell me exactly what it all was. One day my future father-in-law was eating something crunchy that smelled delicious. I asked my husband what it was….pickled pigs’ feet. I was not a fan.
At that time in history and in a rural southern town, it was highly unusual that the Browns didn’t care if you were black or white; if you didn’t have money to eat, they would sell you food on credit. They would carefully write the customer’s name in a ledger who needed credit. The person would then sign their name or make an X. My husband told me that not one single person ever neglected to return to the store on pay day and repay Mr. Brown what he was owed.
Wow. Have times changed.
Anyway, the coffee company workers would go to Purdy Street Grocery for lunch, and then they could purchase one cigarette. The store sold cigarette singles, 2 for a nickel. In the front of the store was one Pure Oil gas pump, and my husband recalls that many times as a child he was sent outside to the gas pump to help customers. He had to wind it up to get the gas out. Back then it was 20 cents a gallon.
One of my husband’s favorite memories is about his father and the 45 he kept under the counter. His father never used it, but my husband did take it out and hold it up once.
“I must have been five or six years old when this big white man came in, noticed me, and started picking at me, calling me girl names and saying I looked like a little girl,” he said. “I got so angry with him that I went to the counter, got the gun, pulled it out pointed it at him. Shocked, my dad quickly intervened to take the gun away from me and tell me I couldn’t do that. But Daddy was grinning when he said it, and I don’t ever remember that man coming back in the store again.”
In his free time when he wasn’t helping at the store, my husband was anxious to leave the tiny three-bedroom house shared by 7 adults with one bathroom and play with his cousins in the open field by his house. Their favorite game besides football and baseball was Pony Express.
Evidently, Pony Express was a TV western at the time and all the neighborhood boys got together to pretend to ride their “horses” which were bikes, follow a trail they made, and hand off “mail” (bags of junk) off to the next pony in line while riding as fast as they could. They had a blast and would stay out playing until house lights came on.
In those days, families sat on porches after church on Sundays and talked while kids played. A coffee cake was a staple of the home just waiting to be served to “company” if someone stopped by. Ice cream was churned with a crank, families took Sunday drives out to the country, and people took time to visit one another.
Purdy Street Grocery eventually closed when a modern convenience store moved just across the highway. The mom-and-pop store was lost to progress.
Now, life has changed. Kids stay indoors and play alone on video games, people stay in their homes too busy to visit, and families get together only on holidays.
Why did this happen?
Because we let it.
