Dan's Market: Groceries in the 1950s

Seventy years ago, mothers had no qualms about sending children to pick up a few items at the neighborhood grocery store. That was way before big boxes and parental guilt.

A week before Thanksgiving, I went shopping like everyone else within a hundred miles. That day, a senior class from the local high school had also chosen to shop for Thanksgiving items to donate to the Food Closet.

Actually, I was pleased to see these youngsters going about this unique scavenger hunt. A couple of teachers wandered within cry-and-pout distance in lieu of any questions. All seemed to be going well until I took my place in the checkout line and heard the puzzled mumblings behind me:

"Okay, we got the stuff. Now what do we do? Do we go through this line?"

"Don't ask me. I don't know."

"Oh! My! God!" cried one hapless girl. "I'll have to do this in six months all by myself."

Sleep tight America! Gen-Z is aging into adulthood.

As a Boomer, I lived in a free-range world. I had a stay-at-home mom who worked a night shift so she could be home after school. Also, I was expected to do chores, including trips to the neighborhood market for things Mom ran out of between major shopping trips.

Mom called chores "earning your keep." Depression-era parents had a mixed-message relationship with their children. They wanted to provide everything they didn't have when they were kids, but were resentful when their kids  acquired all the toys and advantages they never had. Thus, the rebellious hippie generation grew up with all their pre-entitlement-era attitudes developed to "give the kids the moon without all the guilt." It's a parenting style we Boomers have come to regret.

Now in my mid-seventies, I'm remembering those days when Mom would hand me a list of items to buy at Dan's Market. Because I must've been somewhat deficient, she ran through the list to make sure I understood exactly what she wanted.

"Get the small cans of frozen orange juice, not the big ones. Your Dad got those when I sent him and they were too much for my pitcher. Why men have to get everything big, I'll never understand. So just get the little cans."

I nodded. Apparently, Dad believed bigger is better … and cheaper? It's the constant struggle between thrift and waste.

Photo by Alexandr Podvalny on Unsplash

There was never any produce on the list because choosing ripe fruit and veggies took years of training and she just didn't have the time. Maybe I could be trusted with bananas and grapes, but that was the extent of it.

Finally, she gave me money knotted inside a handkerchief to put in my pocket so I wouldn't lose it. And I was to bring back the sales slip so she could check if I was short-changed.

Then off I'd go, walking three blocks to the store. It was safe to allow me to do that because I didn't have to cross the highway. Besides, we were drilled in school about crossing a street all by ourselves. Look both ways and walk, don't run, at the corners. NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLOCK. That was jaywalking.

Okay. I got this.

Dan's Market in 1957 was a typical family-run grocery store, although it didn't have wooden plank floors and incandescent lights. The grocer didn't wander around wearing an apron to his knees. Dan's had clean, linoleum flooring and florescent lights. And its own parking lot, where at sixteen, I left the shift stick in neutral on Dad's car and it rolled into another parked car. My first auto accident.  Like I said, deficient.

Once through the automatic doors, which I always thought would smack me in the head, I'd go to the bakery counter immediately on the right. I'd watch the girl send my bread through the slicing machine; then deftly slip all those slices into a paper bag. My favorites were the sweet rolls with cinnamon and raisin inside the rings. Little dribbles of white frosting crossed the top. Somewhere around 1965, the recipe changed because they never tasted the same until we went to Solvang, CA and found the luscious old-fashioned sweet rolls still being made correctly.

The produce section was next. Back then, it was mostly potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery, leaving room for seasonal crops like corn on the cob. Apples, oranges, and bananas also filled basic needs. You could make a Waldorf salad all year long. There were no avocados or artichokes, though, or blueberries, kiwis, or mangoes. Cantaloupes, peaches, pears, and strawberries came only in summer. Sometimes there were pineapples and a variety of nuts still encased in their shells.

At the meat counter, Mom would point to the chops she wanted from the glass case displaying rows of meat. Then the butcher wrapped them in stiff, white paper. This customer/butcher relationship was way beyond my capacity. There was no vast array of plastic-wrapped meat products we have now. Choosing one's desired steak or roast is a thing of the past except in specialty markets.

Cereals and canned goods took up most of the store. That's where you could fill in the blanks from the produce department. Dairy and frozen foods lined the back wall and included a basic items. Yogurt didn't exist in our culture yet. Cheddar, Swiss and cottage filled out the cheese selection. It was all pretty generic; although generics hadn't appeared yet either. It was Del Monte, Dole, Campbell's, and Chef Boyardi.

The list usually included a can of tomato paste or a dozen eggs, a quart of milk, bread, tuna fish. Things that were needed in a pinch. Mom cooked or baked from scratch except for the occasional Betty Crocker cake mix.

Also, no alcoholic beverages. I can't remember if Dan's even sold tobacco products.

Huge windows banked the front of the building, letting sunlight stream into the store. Sometimes holiday murals or sale price posters covered them. This section is where the paper and personal hygiene products lived. Most toilet paper came two in a package, not the raft-sized bundles so popular during the pandemic.

The first time I ever ventured into these aisles was after school one day after Nancy Buchanan and I endured The Maturation Lecture in our sixth grade class. There we stood in That Aisle, looking at all the belts and pads and wondering how anyone could walk up to the checkout with a box of Tampax. Nancy pointed and laughed. I just stood there, embarrassed and wanting assurance that checkers would shed some grace upon us until we acquired the impertinence to just toss that brightly colored box on the counter and dare them to snicker.

When I told my daughter about listening to the whimpering kids at the store, she said, "Mom, you never took me to the store, so how was I supposed to learn?" That hit me like a slap in the face, but she was right. Wherever we lived, the grocery store was at least eight-ten miles away. The closest minimart was two. And god forbid any parent these days should shove their seven-year-old out the door to run an errand. The daughter apparently learned how to shop for herself, though, even before doorstep delivery. And these days, she's learning how to grow her own food.

UPDATE 12-5-2024: My daughter lives in a food desert in rural Nevada. Residents must drive a dozen or so miles to Dayton, the nearest town where Smith’s and Grocery Outlet sell a wide array of food products. About thirty miles away is Carson City where Smith’s, Raley’s, Safeway, Costco, and Walmart and others await to take your paycheck for as much stuff as you can cram into your car for the coming month. This article in The Atlantic explains why food deserts came to be, the demise of the neighborhood stores, and how this problem can be solved if the in-coming administration has the will and moral fortitude to support the rural constituents who voted it into office in the first place.

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All my books, Paradise Ridge, When the Horses Come and Go, and Ghost in the Forest are currently available on Kindle. 

Ghost in the Forest, is also available in paperback for ten bucks. Paradise Ridge is out-of-print, but the Kindle version is re-edited and better quality. Hard copies of “When the Horses Come and Go” are gone unless that dusty box in the corner still has some.

Book Review of Ghost in the Forest:

E.R. Flynn, Illustrator, Cartoonist, Storyteller and Creator of "Escape from Clowntown Comics" here on Substack.

"Ghost in The Forest" is a great read! Take note People. If you love stories about environmentalism and nature, its clash with urban mindsets, as well as personal transformation, this is the book for you!

"Ghost in The Forest" is a quick 126-page read. It's the story of Dori, a woman trapped in a mix of grief over parental loss and refusing to accept how her hometown and her friends have changed over the years. Because of this, Dori has become a recluse and a self-imposed misanthrope who finds more comfort amongst the hiking trails around her hometown of Morristown than in her dealings with the raw reality of other humans.

The book, in some ways, resembled Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” in that the story follows a protagonist's love of nature and angst about humans encroaching on it. In this case, it’s how Morristown is transforming into a mountain biking destination where cyclists run rampant on trails and nature.

However, a tragedy involving said mountain biking becomes a major pivot point for Dori, leading to a series of events that eventually bring about personal evolution and discovery.

If you're a nature lover, this book is a must-read. It beautifully portrays the clash between environmentalism and urban mindsets and the journey of personal transformation. The book's vivid descriptions of nature and the protagonist's love for it will surely intrigue you.

Paradise Ridge Review by western author D. B. Jackson:

If you draw circle roughly around an area that includes northern Nevada, southern Oregon, and southern Idaho, within that circle exists a culture and people who live a lifestyle largely untouched by modern values. These are the "buckaroos" and Basque characters author Sue Cauhape brings to life in her literary novel, "Paradise Ridge".

Leandro, the illegitimate seventh son of patriarch Xavier Arriaga and his mistress, Gisela, is at the center of this intriguing story that travels exceedingly successfully at both the personal level of the characters, as well as the compelling level where the story is told.

Cauhape writes in a literary style that reminds me of Annie Poulx. Paradise Ridge, on the surface, appears to be an upscale Western novel...once inside the pages, you will soon discover a potential classic waiting to be discovered.

I rated this book a 5...because that's all the stars there were.