Ok - what happened to my last post? I had lots of pithy, funny comments in there and they got lost in the ether of the internet. I hate it when that happens. Well, I had to go to Murrieta for work and decided to drive. The first pic was going over the Grapevine. The snow had just started and it looked kinda nice. I took a pic while driving dangerously close to those big rigs. What was I thinking?
The other pic was Holden being silly and a picture of my rug which is really wood slats like a hardwood floor. I am on the only one who sees the irony in covering a carpeted floor with a rug that looks like a hardwood floor?
Anyway, I think I have a plot for this rambling Casa Fernandes tale. So here is the next mini-chapter. We have met James, the beautiful dreamer, and here is the intro to the next two characters we will meet - Mr. Touch and a guy named Tom. I couldn't remember his name so I went with Tom.
Trips to the Store
For whatever reason, my family required at least three trips per day to the local store – Food Town. Food Town was most easily accessed through the shortcut, through the church, past Casa Fernandes and around the corner to the store. Only one street had to be crossed and the total trip on foot was less than 10 minutes.
Food Town itself was a typical small market – some canned food aisles, a produce section, a butcher in the back and a refrigerator section in the far back aisle. The all important candy aisle was closest to the registers. The registers were those key-punch style registers. The numbers 1-9 ran in columns for the dollars and cents. I remember watching with fascination as the cashier could push several buttons at once without looking to ring up an order.
Maybe my grandma needed flour for her tortillas or a pack of Salems, maybe it was my great-grandmother’s need for a carton of milk and a pack of Marlboros, maybe my mom needed a loaf of bread or a pack of Tareytons. Now that I think about, we were just enablers of their respective smoking addictions. Don’t even get me started on why 8 year olds were allowed to buy cigarettes in the first place. Although we did have a note:
“Dear Food Town – please sell a pack of cigarettes to my son. He will not smoke them – honestly. Signed, his Mom."
Even more strange was that neither my brother nor I (the primary couriers) smoked – then or now. Maybe being the drug mules for so long turned us off to the habit.
I used to toss the cigarettes in the air and catch them as I made my way home. On one trip, I threw the box too high and it went over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Our neighbor was insane and bought a ram to eat the grass instead of just mowing once a month like a normal person. The ram was a heartless creature who acted well, like a ram and tried to head butt you if you went into his territory. I had to hop the fence, retrieve the cigarettes and hop back over before the ram could attack me. Luckily I made it and the cigarettes were delivered safely.
The reward for a fast trip to the store was a portion of the change. Granma was the best tipper usually giving all of the leftover change. I never felt right accepting money from my Great-grandma. She spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish so even getting her order right was a small miracle. It usually involved lots of pantomime and pointing at empty containers. My mom usually allowed us to keep part of the change.
And with the newly earned cash, a trip to the store was in order to spend the tip. It was on one of those follow-up trips that I met two more residents of Casa Fernandes and gained a little insight into what really went on there.
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4 comments:
What a cliff-hanger! I learn so much from your posts...great grandma smoked? I have no memory of that. Wow.
Food Town? My memory- which is admittedly inferior to yours- of the neighborhood store was Menu Market. Maybe it eventually became food town but in the days of your book, it was known simply as Menu.
Menu or Romley's. I can't even think of that word without a mexican-ish twang at the end, ala gramma.
Who will ever forget the times she drove to Romley's? Eeeessshh! Even as a kid I was nervous. She would have to sit on pillows to see, and her little legs barely reached the pedals. But she always drove these big ass Pontiac's or something.
Great stuff.
Uhmmm...Marrietta? California? Where is that? The only one I know of is George-a
Oh wait its Murrietta. Not that I know where Murrieta, California is. Oh wait google says its near Temecula. That is a haul!
I didn't know the market by either name, I thought it's name was the "little store". And for whatever reason, I remember a fear of the brick planter box on the side of the store. As if I was told at some time that I could never touch it because people pee'd in it.
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