The Shop

Last November when we were visiting in Sudbury I was reminded how memories of the same events can vary between people. It should not be surprising since we experience people and events differently, and we see things in the light of our individual experience and pre-dispositions. I say this by way of a disclaimer for the memories I have been recalling. My siblings may have very different recollections of these same things.

A great deal of our lives revolved around The Shop. The Shop was a Ma & Pa grocery store our parents operated. Throughout my childhood I heard about when it was located “under the cocoa-house”. The cocoa-house was built up on pillars, and my recollection the downstairs was open. We played there, and sometimes animals were stabled there. The upstairs of the cocoa-house was a large tray, which occupied the entire floor. Then entire roof moved on rails, and would be pushed along the rails, which extended beyond the building to expose the tray to sunlight so that cocoa beans could be dried.

In any case, in my recollection the shop was a wooden building down the hill from our house. There were two wooden steps that brought one into the shop. The area in front of the counter is where customers stood when they came to shop. Behind the counter was where most of the “goods” were kept. We children helped Ma as soon as we were able to count. There was a drawer built in where the money was kept. There was a file, which consisted of a wire hook that was hung from a nail. Customer bills (IOU’s) were kept in this file. On the counter there was a scale and weights where all goods were weighed. Few things were prepackaged.

Back of the sales area were two rooms. One of these rooms there were bulk items like cooking oil, salted cod fish, the salt meat barrel, kerosene etc. The other room was largely vacant, and from to time we had renters (I think) who stayed there. The front doors, where the public entered, were secured by bolts from the inside. Secured is used somewhat loosely since the bolts did not always fit securely in the holes. It was not unusual to come in the morning to open up and find the doors were not quite secured. I used to have nightmares about this, and still do from time to time. We used the back door to access the building, which was secured by a lock.

The shop was more of a public service than a business. My parents were not very good business people. They sold so much on credit that they often did not have enough capital to stock the shelves. Every now and then a new infusion of cash was needed. Pa had to go to work outside as the “business” could not support the family. I faintly remember from my child’s memory, my mother borrowing money from her brother to re-stock the shop. Ma went to San Fernando to buy groceries for the shop on Tuesdays. It was often my chore on Tuesday morning to go to people in the village and tell them that Ma was going “to buy goods” and ask them to pay their bills. I remember this task with great distaste. People often hid, or made my mother look mean for asking for the money they owed. I vowed there and then that I would never go into retail business.

At the same time the shop was, indeed, a public service. Whatever my parents lost in cash they made up in good will. Sure, you can’t take it to the bank, but it fit in well with the kind of people they were. And the shop helped to feed our family. During the WW II when many food items were in short supply, we were able to eat. We still had to live off the fruits of the land, a great deal, but we lived. The shop was central in our lives because it was the family business. But it was much more than that. There was a constant parade of people who came through every week. They knew that Ma and Pa cared. Sometimes they took unfair advantage of them, but there was always a respect there for my parents. I know that the shop helped to form me in my positive ways. In that sense, too, it was much more than a business.