[Today’s run: nothing yet]
I saw a post on Facebook which prompted a memory.
When I was a kid maybe once a month or so I would spend the night at my grandparents house.
These grandparents lived out in the country east of Des Moines, Iowa. They went into town for their groceries. For a long time they shopped at a grocery store on SE 30th street, south of Maury Street on the east side of 30th. I see from google maps that the building is still there at 805 SE 30th and is labeled as Sams Riverside Builder Lot, a place where you can buy wrecked cars that can be repaired.
Anyway, 45 years ago it was a grocery store and we went there fairly often. It had aisles and grocery carts and the normal stuff. One thing I particularly remember is that this was before the invention of bar codes. Cans and packages and stuff weren’t even labeled with the prices, as I recall. The “checker” at the front had to know the price of each item in order to ring it up on the old fashioned cash register.
Later the stores started using little price stickers, one on each item. And that was probably a pain because they had to have a sticker-gun-thingy which they used to put a sticker on each can and package before it went on the shelf. Yuck.
So then the smart guys invented UPC labels and bar code readers and the checker could, instead of memorizing numbers, could use that surplus brain power to sell gift cards and put the just-right number of items in each bag. Now when we go to Wal-mart and Kroger they also have self-checkout, so the checker can stay home and watch soaps or something.
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More googling has caused me to rethink a bit. It looks like Pidgeons Furniture was at 805 SE 30th from the 1950’s and 1960’s. So I’m not sure where the grocery store was.