I grew up in Knox’s General Store in Wadena, Iowa. My parents ran this store, and I spent a large part of my younger years in this small-town business mostly entertaining myself while my folks served their customers. Knox’s General Store was one of three grocery stores in Wadena, a town of nearly 350 residents located in rural Fayette County in Northeast Iowa.
Knox’s Grocery Store sold canned goods, bread, bakery items, milk, butter, hand–sliced cheese, packaged ice cream, hand-packed ice cream, packaged cookies, bulk cookies in bins with glass doors, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit including bananas that arrived in large wooden crates still in large bunches just as harvested, and fresh eggs “candled” in the store after local farmers brought them in to receive credit on their grocery bills.
Many customers came for the fresh meat case items including fresh-ground hamburger, freshly cut steaks, roasts and chops plus wieners in natural casings, bologna in long tubes and longhorn cheese fresh-sliced from a very large cheese cylinder that required great care and experience to avoid slicing off your fingers when you were a kid just trying to get a piece of cheese for a snack – more on that later! One of my favorite items were the rings of boloney that you could eat cold or boiled after peeling off the casing.
My Dad cut up large halves of beef on a large free-standing butcher block using huge butcher knives that he sharpened with a long steel tool that would give his knives a razor-sharp edge. The halves of beef hung in a large walk-in cooler that also held the milk, cheese, butter and Zymadrops vitamins that I took with the glass eyedropper that came with the vitamins!
Zymadrops were a thick, orange-flavored sweet syrupy liquid that I squeezed into my mouth with an eyedropper. It was better than any candy and my folks and doc wood said I could eat all I wanted! Dad kept it cold in the walk-in cooler.
But Knox’s General Store was much more than a grocery store. Customers could buy clothes, shoes, rubber boots, magazines, comic books, non-prescription drug store items [the store building was a drug store when the folks bought it – more on how that was continued later], beauty supplies, animal feed, toys, bottles of cold pop for a nickel, and sliced cold meat and cheese to snack on with the pop. That is why it was a “General” store and not just a “grocery” store. To me, this made it SPECIAL and why for many years I have dreamed of writing from a general store perspective. Imagine watching the people and activity from my “Nest” on top of the walk-in cooler. That makes it all look different. And makes this blog different.
What I see from my Nest is what will be on this blog. There is no set inclusion or exclusion. You can enjoy what I share from the Bunny Trails my mind takes me. Or not. My joy is writing. Possibly you will enjoy what I write. If not, my wish for you is to find something to read that you do enjoy. The rest of us will just go down these trails.
Now I need to find a piece of bologna and a chunk of cheese and a cold Coke – no longer a nickel. I ‘ll see you down the trail.
This photo is looking up the main street of Wadena from the South. And, yes, that is the entire main street. The bridge is the one that replaced the bridge that collapsed late one evening. [Full story someday.] The church is the Wadena Presbyterian Church where my mother played organ for fifty years. A pastor told me she is now playing in a much larger church. I just hope dad is enjoying his cookies and coffee before and after church.