FoodBanter.com - View Single Post

Julie Bove[_2_]

"jmcquown" > wrote in message
...
> On 12/25/2014 11:00 PM, wrote:
>> On Thursday, December 25, 2014 6:41:20 PM UTC-8, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
>>> On 12/25/2014 2:47 PM, jmcquown wrote:
>>>> On 12/25/2014 2:02 PM, Jeßus wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 24 Dec 2014 04:21:40 -0800, "Julie Bove"
>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Well, I wasn't alive in those days but from what I have read, they
>>>>>> had
>>>>>> little shops nearby and they bought things as needed.
>>>>>
>>>>> ROTFL. So, basically you're saying that everyone everywhere had
>>>>> "little shops nearby" and could buy things as they needed them. Thanks
>>>>> for that, I might not have ever gotten around to reading that
>>>>> information.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Sounds to me like she's reading historical romance novels where the
>>>> kithen maid finds an excuse to go to town every day.
>>>>
>>>> Jill
>>>
>>> There is some truth to that in the city. My grandmother wled just over
>>> a block to the bakery for bread, stopping at the meat store on the way
>>> home. A small grocery store was next door. It was common for the store
>>> to sell "on the book" and settle up at the end of the week.
>>>
>>> There were many small stores every couple of blocks. Grocery, variety,
>>> clothing, etc. Everything you needed in walking distance. The
>>> popularity of the automobile and supermarkets started to change all of
>>> that in the 1950's.
>>
>> Reference to an R L Polk directory will show perhaps hundreds of grocery
>> stores in cities like Chicago in the 1920s. A friend's wife recalls
>> horse-drawn carts carrying all manner of things down the alleys of
>> her Chicago neighborhood as late as 1954. And, my FIL as a young man
>> helped a produce peddler in the 1930s -- they would go to Eastern
>> Market in the morning, load up the wagon, and go down the streets of
>> a particular neighborhood, until all their wares were sold to the
>> housewives.
>>
> Yeah, but Chicago was a city. There were and still are plenty of people
> who didn't live in a city with stores on every block within walking
> distance.

And I *said* that was in the city!!!! I would also venture to guess that in
the old days more people lived in cities than not but I could be wrong on
that. Why do I say this? That would be where most of the jobs were. Sure
when they put in railroads and things like that, that created jobs.
Sometimes only the men went along. Sometimes families. But in the case of
the railroad, I think they made sure that food was available. Might have
been from the company store. Not sure.