If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Time was Port Allegany had several grocery stores. Four or five, all at one time!

Some people picked up something from one store or another every day. That seemed to be common for people who lived “in town.”

Farm families and others who lived some distance “out in the country” came to town once a week or every two weeks, and made the rounds of several stores to get the shopping done.

Shopping lists included things to be bought at the five-and-ten, and at the hardware, and the drug store, or the dry goods store or at a clothing store or a shoe store.

Two five-and-tens, two or more shoe stores, several clothing stores! Two bakeries, two or more hardwares.

Hard to believe? Look at the ads in an old “Tiger Lily.” Visit the Facebook page “Port Allegany: Remember when…”

The housewife often took the kids with her for a major shopping trip. Sometimes she carried a shopping basket or two. There might not be carts in the stores, and few stores were self-service..

Coopers specialized in meats. That was a butcher shop with some other groceries. At various times there were a Market Basket, an A&P, a Red & White, Chapin’s, Manning’s, and I think there were Ralph’s and Burgart’s and Farmelo’s. There were neighborhood stores like Alton Robbins, which also had a meat department, and Beck’s. There was a Red & White at Two Mile and a general store-post office-gas station at Wrights.

Grocery stores didn’t offer much that wasn’t edible, back then, but general stores did. At Wrights there were clothing items and barnyard boots and magazines and motor oil, and plenty of miscellaneous.

Merchandise in grocery stores used to be on stores, and much of it was visible to shoppers. They sometimes just gave their shopping lists to the proprietors or clerks, who then found the desired items and brought them to the counter. Or the shoppers asked for or pointed to the things they wanted, and the owners or help got the goods from the shelves, climbing or using long tongs to grab items stored on the highest shelves.

A&P was short for The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. But many customers associated it with coffee, for it was the store where coffee could be bought in the bean and ground to order right there, making the whole store redolent of a heavenly scent.

Some readers may remember A&P as a super-market chain, and would not remember little store-front A&Ps. But there was one right here, back when Bokar, Eight O’Clock and Red Circle could be bought only in an A&P. Fond of spoonerisms even as a small child, I called it the A & Poo Feed Store. (Milk truck runs to Abbotts often involved a stop at the GLF feed store, later Burleson’s.)

The change to self-service grocery stores required more floor space, and the use of carts. The first supermarket in Port was a Market Basket—where the Citizens & Northern bank is now. When Lillibridge Place was built, as a redevelopment project after the 1972 flood, Market Basket was the anchor store.

Market Basket moved to its new digs sometimes in the late 1970s, I think. It seems to me management and employees were retained, and some additional help was hired.

Through changes at the top, changes in franchise holders, name changes to Jubilee and then to Shop ’n Save, to the best of my recollection, there was no “house cleaning” that saw employees laid off. When the “new” Market Basket expanded its floor space by about 50 percent, there was no pronged shut-down, no major disruption in service.

For a while Port had the H&C Cash and Carry grocery on Pearl Street. I liked some of the items that were available in bulk there. It seemed to be good for shoppers, that there was some competition between stores. Now the Dollar General does have a small food department, and better prices on some items than in the supermarket.

So the upcoming closure of the local Shop ’n Save, and the termination of its employees, spell major disruption in the community.

Certainly the loss of jobs will be disruptive to the lives of the affected employees and their families. And shoppers will be left with few options.

Costa’s flyer invited (albeit prematurely) supermarket-bereft Port Alleganians to visit their Smethport and Eldred stores. Probably Turtlepoint’s amazing general store (and excellent meat department) would be another option. Last I heard Carlson’s still delivers in Port once a week. They carry the Shurfine line.

How permanently will shopping habits change in the weeks that the local supermarket is not open? How much will people miss the deli? Will they eat out more, get more meals to go? Chances are more locals will not want to continue to travel an extra seven, nine or more miles for regular grocery shopping.

“New management” will surely know that it would be advantageous to hire the cadre of experienced and helpful employees who have been serving us shoppers right along—won’t they? They would understand that anything that smacks of union busting would not be well received in this community with its blue collar traditions.

At least I hope so.

Peace.