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| J & E GROCERY |
| The Shop | My father bought a small grocery store in spring 1952, at 204 E 15th Street, while he was still working at Minneapolis Moline. I think there is a freeway now where the store once stood. It was a family run business meaning it was him and my mother and so the kids got to hang out there when school was out.
It was crammed with all kinds of stuff, had two small rooms out back. In one there was an electric element and I can remember canned hash and chicken ala king being heated upon it. But what I really liked to eat was a piece of pie at diner down the block. It was next to a Chinese laundry. You went up a couple steps to get in and sat elevated over the street. All glass front, but I preferred to sit at the counter. Our store was part of complex. Next to it and on the corner was a City Pharmacy. Above were apartments and a hair dresser. And in the basement was a toilet for staff. It was more like a cellar with one dim light. I never liked going down there. Speaking of toilets. Once we were upstairs visiting a lady and I used her facilities. Only trouble I locked myself in??? Don't know how it happened. But I do remember the panic on the other side of the door. Obviously, I was rescued - I think the lady used a hair pin to pick the lock. |
  Mom 
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 Mom  Angie  Angie  Mom | |
| The People | There was an old man, dressed in a suit, who would come to the store each afternoon and buy a Drumstick for 10¢.
Another regular customer once brought me and Angie to the Shriner Circus in the Mpls Auditorium which was just a couple blocks away. I remember that he bought us each a rather large helium filled balloon. My mom was being "held up" by a guy. Apparently, I ran in from out back and frightened him and he fled. My mom says that we made the local TV news that night and the newspaper the next day, but I don't remember. | 
 Auditorium 1957 | ||
| The Kids | Behind the store across the alley was a derelict house (A - below) - the kind with no grass, no paint and an old couch on the porch. It was occupied by a colored family. Angi and I got to know the kids and would spend hours playing with them, inside and outside the house. | |||
| The Slicer | We had an electric meat slicer used to cut thin slices. One day something went wrong and my mother cut hand (I don't remember which finger or exactly where). I remember the blood. I called the police via "O" (before the day of "911") and cops and ambulance men showed up. | |||
| The Warehouse | Another cool adventure for us kids was when my father went to buy items at the wholesale place on 4th Avenue. So much food stacked high to the ceiling and the floor was covered in sawdust. We would drive the car into the place and load up. Well, the men did. Me, I was intrigued with the water cooler that dispensed it into paper cone cups and gurgled in the process. | |||
| The Mahaceks | Charlie "Sonny" Mahacek (family from Bechyn) opened the store for a period while Dad had to do the morning shift at Moline and his mother took over at noon. | |||
| The Audio | Dad and I talk - Dec 1993. | |||
| The End | Only lasted two years and was sold in August 1954 when my mother was too pregnant with Chris to help out.. | |||
| The Diagram |  | |||