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Grocery Store

[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.

5 replies on “Grocery Store”

I remember the whole thing as Pigeon’s that morphed from a grocery store to a furniture store in the late 60’s. Around the same time Pleasant Hill got Lloyd’s.
For some reason I’m putting the Easters store at 42nd & University, but that’s probably wrong because I recall it as a Super Valu, too. Weird.

Around here we have the Aldi grocery stores that are terrific little warehouse style gems. They’re owned by Europeans so there are very interesting imported items at reasonable prices (where the local specialty shops would charge extra just because the label’s in German or Dutch or something). Up until about five years ago the clerks had all the prices memorized. Some new Aldi’s were built in the area and all of them got an upgrade to new cash register/scanner systems. It’s okay, but I’m not sure the check out time is any faster or more accurate. Although their product selection has really grown so it probably helps the clerks not having to memorize all the seasonal products.

Interesting! Fun looking through that old Quill and seeing companies that were (or are) still around.

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