By Jim Huizenga
9/20/2013
Many of the finer details of the following accounts have faded in the past 50 plus years, and I'm sure that other's personal memories will vary widely from mine. Some literary license has been used to replace/embelish many of those details.
My Uncle Orville was quite the kidder. If you didn't know him very well, you couldn't tell when he was pulling your leg and when he wasn't. If you did know him, you knew that most of the time ---- he was ---- and you knew it ---- but you believed him anyway.
Crescent City - A Farm Town
For as long as I had any remembrance of them, he and Aunt Hattie had owned an IGA grocery store in Crescent City, an Illinois farm country town of approximately 800 people. Because of their reputation for good meats and standing behind every cut they sold, some customers came 30 miles just for the meat.
The TP&W (Toledo, Peoria & Western, or as we kids called it, Take Paper & Wipe) Railroad and the 2 lane highway (Route 24, a busy east/west route) ran through the middle of town, as the main street. The businesses lined the south side of the highway with 50-75 feet of grassy area between it and the railroad on the north. As with most small farm towns, the grain elevators, railroads and two lane roads are the heart of the town.
On any given summer day you were likely to see main street traffic of vacationing travelers in station wagons (wondering just what they passed through - they must have blinked - and why they had to slow down), 18 wheelers, bicycling town kids, or farmers hauling crops to the grain elevator.
The two block downtown business district fronted on the highway with just enough space to park a vehicle between it and the sidewalk. The sidewalk was a high, two step rise from the highway and if you parked too close to the sidewalk, you couldn't open the passenger side doors far enough to get out. In the winter, the highway snowplows pushed the snow against the steps making a slippery ski slope - impossible for even us kids to climb, without a Sherpa guide. Of course, this also meant parking your car dangerously close to those 18 wheelers that seemed to fly through town.
The Store - Outside
The store was the second business from the corner, the first originally a furniture store, later converted to a bar. After all, you can sell a lot more alcohol than furniture in a small farm town. When business wasn't going well, the tavern owner drank until it did. Ocasionally he used Uncle Orville and I as guinea pigs to test his new mixed drink recipes. We never complained.
The building was 2 story, with ceilings so high, the extra height could have made a 3rd story. The second floor above the store was completely empty, except for the ping pong table that my cousins and I played on. It was one of the best echo chambers I've ever been in. The tall front store windows provided a canvas for Uncle Orville to paint the specials of the day with his brush and cup of white liquid chalk.
The Store - Inside
Just inside the right window as you entered, was the pop cooler. Bottles of Grapette, Orange Crush (the two best flavors ever made), Coke, Pepsi and others were kept cold by standing in water that must have been a maximum of one degree above freezing. I was given the job of filing the cooler and diving for those bottles knocked down by customers (I think the kids knocked them over on purpose). I could only stand retrieving a couple of bottles at a time before I had to stop to warm my hands. During the summer a watermelon would frequently keep the pop company.
Immediately through the doors you would run into Aunt Hattie at the checkout counter. Under the counter, Aunt Hattie kept the box of individual order pads for those customers that 'charged' their groceries. The waitress like pads kept track of their bill until payment was made. Due to the good heartedness of Uncle Orville and Aunt Hattie, many customers were carried for extended periods, with some never completely settling their accounts.
Sugar Time
The wooden floor creaked here and there as you made the scenic trip to the meat department (manned by Uncle Orville) in the back of the store. As kids, we drooled as we passed the candy, bulk cookies in glass topped boxes and other assorted sugar laden treasures. These temptations had been strategically placed across from the checkout within Aunt Hattie's view, to reduce sticky little finger shrinkage.
Each year just before Christmas, the candy area was busy after closing, to pack small paper bags with candy. These bags of assorted candy were given to every member and child of the Danforth Reformed Church at the Christmas Program. As kids, we had been practicing our lines for several weeks from the little strips of paper we were given. While we were expected to say them perfectly, we knew we'd get that bag of goodies, no matter how much we messed up our pieces. Being winter time in the Midwest, the fresh orange that accompanied each bag, was almost equally enjoyed.
The big oil stove rested in the center of the store silently building up its strength while awaiting the future challenge of providing enough winter heat to reach from high ceiling to floor.
The Meat Department
Fresh fruit and vegetables were displayed along the left wall just before you reached the meat display case. It was amazing how much was organized into that 10-12 foot meat case - fresh cut steaks, roasts, chops, hamburger (3 different grades, 29, 39 and 59 cents a pound, depending on the fat/lean ratio), liver, oysters (When weighing oysters, it was, "A pint's a pound, the world around.") --- and bulk lunch meats. No prepackaged lunch meats, unless you wanted the whole chub.
"Did you want those 10 slices a quarter of an inch thick or so thin you can read your newspaper through them? "
Uncle Orville tried to get me to bet on how close he could come to eyeballing the amount of ground beef a customer requested before placing it on the scale, but with his years of experience and having seen him in action, there was no way I was taking that losing bet.
He stood about 5 feet nothing tall and weighed in at a rounded 265. Just to look at him you knew he was going to be fun to be around. He played no favorites and would pull the leg of anyone. When I was growing up in the next town over (about 7 miles away), I was 'hired' to help them in the grocery store. Their store was a family operation, requiring at most on a Wednesday (outdoor free movie night) or a Saturday night (when all the farmers finally could find time to come to town.), four people to run both the front and back end of the store. Their 3 daughters; Janel, Carol or Kay (my cousins) and Aunt Hattie provided support for the front end while I helped Uncle Orville in the back.
Uncle Orville and I would normally be found behind the meat counter doing butcher things like: sharpening knives, reducing a quarter of a cow into pieces small enough to wrap for a customer to carry home, and keeping an eye on customers coming into the store. On warm summer days, monitoring certain customers became particularly hazardous. We found it advisable to put down our knives when young ladies in shorts entered. An Orvillism I'll always remember, "You'll cut yourself quicker with a dull knife than a sharp one." But, I think this monitoring was the one exception, or corallary, to that rule, "Not watching what you are cutting, no matter how sharp the knife, will quickly result in self inflicted wounds."
A Rascal - Young And Old
Even when young, Uncle Orville must have been a bit of a rascal. He attended a one room country school with a single female teacher. He told of the boys taking the hand crank out of an old phone, hooking it up to wires to line the wooden seat (hole) of the outhouse. When the teacher went in, they gave her time to sit down and gave the little generator a few good cranks. She jumped up, thinking she was bitten by a spider and quickly exited the facilities. He never related if there were any repercussions for giving the teacher a "spider bite". I'm not sure whether that story was true or not. He was such a good story teller, you believed everything he told you -- I know I always did.
All the children loved him, and would do what ever he told them, no questions asked. One winter, the kids that lived in the house across the alley behind the store decided to build a snow fort in their back yard for an upcoming snowball fight. Figuring that using the big propane gas tank next to the alley as one side of their fort would cut down on the construction time considerably, they were piling and packing snow against the tank for the second fort wall, when Uncle Orville came out onto the back porch/loading dock of the store. He took one look, and told them that he didn't think it was a good idea to pile snow against the tank. With the cold snow against one side of the tank and the sun shining brightly on the other side, it might blow up, and he didn't want his store to blow up with it. The kids began furiously scraping the snow away from the tank as fast as they could with their little mittened hands. Feeling bad, that they were destroying their hard work, he told them that it would probably not blow up until spring anyway and they could continue with their fort.
Another winter day on the way home from the store, he told a youngster to stick his head in a snowbank (reason unknown) and he immediately complied.
Job Training And A Goodbye Hug
Uncle Orville taught me the ins and outs of how to trim and display the produce, cut meat, and convert 100 lb. bags of potatoes to 5, 10 and 15 lb. bags for sale -- all the while attempting to avoid that one rotten potato that was frequently hidden in the middle. (Actually he neglected to tell me about rotten potatoes - he let me learn that, on my own.)
Rotten potatoes were the first known objects to be able to go into the visual stealth mode--and if they had been able to also go into the smell stealth mode, would have made the perfect weapon. Reaching into that huge bag of potatoes to pull out the good ones for bagging and weighing -- when your nose had already detected that one rotten potato that your eyes could not see yet -- caused the brain to try to process conflicting messages to and from the rest of the body. The eyes told the brain to have the hands reach for those good ones while the nose was trying to convince the brain to signal the feet to take everybody out of the room immediately.
Inevitably job requirements and the eyes won out and the hands and nose had to pay the price. I don't think many things smell worse than a rotten potato, especially when the hands are covered with one. After the first encounter with dearly departed dead potato remains, the hands initially fell for the brains' suggestion that the whole bag be dumped out to locate that one potato. Almost every potato in the bag paid their respects to that dying potato on the way out, giving it a deep embrace and a kiss as it went by, resulting in 99.5 lbs. of "slimed" potatoes requiring washing before bagging. Never again...
The Forgotten One - Returns
The back room (where the potatoes were washed) was the main stock room which contained, in addition to most of the store stock, the produce scale to weigh everything from people to freshly cleaned potatoes to watermelons -- boxes and bags for groceries -- store maintenance equipment -- and every once in a while, things that had gotten buried behind and under something for a loooong loooong time. Many objects in this world have no desire to remain in the 'found' category--hiding, then resurfacing and hiding again to not be seen before the passing of way too many "Use By" dates.
For instance, the jug of apple cider that had managed to grow an evil-looking fist-sized ball of concentrate before being discovered -- in the back -- in the corner -- under the shelf -- on the floor -- behind a box. I volunteered to take the jug home, since it obviously was no longer 'fit for sale'. (There always seemed to be lots of good things that were not quite 'fit for sale' that I got to take home.) I wanted to see what transformation had taken place to this cider during its period of disregard. As I remember now, I wasn't all that careful in transporting it home that day, but found out later that this cider had real potential for destruction! After a filtering to remove its evil heart, and an appropriate cooling period in our refrigerator, we tasted it and found it to have a very favorable bouquet and not unpleasant to the palate.
The Potential Path - Destruction
The next weekend my mother decided to clean out the refrigerator-------
Doing a very thorough job, she removed everything from the refrigerator, including the thick oblong-shaped glass water jar which had become the new repository for the aged, 'not fit for sale' cider. After the cleaning, everything was returned to the refrigerator as before, except ---- the cider. The cider jar had once again gone into seclusion, all the while making plans to, when least expected, reappear.
Later that evening, long after thoughts of cleaning refrigerators and drinking apple cider had departed the thinking/reasoning portion of the brain, the sound of an explosion and the shattering of glass emanated from the kitchen. Luckily no one was there to witness the cider's re-emergence from hiding. The cider had decided to make its final reappearance, a very theatrical and sticky one. During the cleaning, the cider jar, because of its convenient narrow shape, had been placed in the space between the refrigerator and whatever was next to it -- and forgotten. The cider had apparently not stopped the fermenting process that had given it its pleasant bouquet and upon warming up had built up more pressure than the jar could withstand. We all felt kind of sorry for that jar. Once again an innocent bystander had become the victim of yet another senseless act of violence.
That's one of the possible ways I'd like to go -- with a bang -- either that or so quietly (as the old adage goes) that even the devil will wonder where I went and how long I've been gone.
The moral here is that cider doesn't like to be forgotten -- especially old cider.
(Just crossed my mind that maybe that's why I've started writing down my stories -- as I'm getting older I don't want to be forgotten either.)
TO NOT BECOME THE NEXT INNOCENT VICTIM
OF AN OLD MAN'S SENSELESS EXPLOSIVE ACT
---- you'd better continue, and read on.
Soup Time - Yum Yum
The stockroom was not able to share the winter heat produced in the front of the store, so Uncle Orville would set up a small oil stove in the middle of the room to keep away the chill. A stock pot would be placed atop it, filled with vegetables, noodles and chicken to simmer through the day to warm the regulars. I've never tasted better chicken soup! Any that made it to the next day tasted even better.
The Facilites - Out-Back Style
Speaking of the back porch --- the bathroom for the store, was off to one side of the loading dock area, and was only heated in summer. To call it a bathroom is stretching even the wildest imagination. It was really an attached outhouse. No one spent much time there. In the summer, it was unbearably hot and smelly, and winter barely brought relief to the nose, with pain inflicting the body/toilet contact points. To eliminate the requirement to "hover" in the winter to avoid posterior frostbite, the user would take the seat from it's honored position on the wall of the warm back room, take advantage of it's protective warmth and return it to the warming wall, to await the next user. Thinking about it now, I don't remember Aunt Hattie or my cousins ever using the 'store bathroom'. I'm sure they had the good sense to use the real bathroom of their house, a half block from the store.
"But what about Mr. Sesame?", you're asking. I'm getting there --
Candling Eggs -
Between the meat department and the 'potato washing' room was another area that, among other things, provided a desk for an office, a light box to candle the eggs the farmers brought in for sale, plus a hot plate and lunch table for break time. For you who've never seen or done it, candling eggs is the process where you hold an egg up to a bright light to check inside for blood and other unacceptables. In our case we used a small cardboard box with two holes in the front and a standard light bulb inside. The eggs were placed against slightly smaller than egg sized holes for the inspection. Sometimes 20 or 30 dozen fresh from the farm eggs, were 'candled' and repackaged at one standing. You'd pick up two eggs in each hand, rotating them into the holes for inspection, before placing them into the standard for sale carton. With practice, dozens of eggs could be inspected and repackaged quickly without damage.
The Fisherman And Mr. Sesame
So There I Was.... having lunch with Uncle Orville. We always ate real well in the store and this time was definitely no exception. We had cooked up a couple of delicious steaks that had started to darken, or as we preferred to put it, 'age' beyond the selling point. As I took a bite out of a dinner roll covered with sesame seeds, I heard Uncle Orville say, as he carefully, almost wistfully studied his roll --
"Mr. Sesame - damn, I should have gone with him." He paused to let that sink in.
"I could have been rich right now."
As far as I was concerned, he was rich. He owned a grocery store, had a big two story house, drove to northern Wisconsin every year for a couple of weeks of fishing, an Edsel in the garage and my cousins had the largest collection of comic books I had ever seen. He had to have been talking about a lot of money, if he didn't consider himself rich.
Having worked with Uncle Orville, I had risen onto the, 'I know when he's kidding' plateau, but yet he was always so convincing and straight faced with every word spoken that I went for the bait anyway --- (Sometimes even if you felt the tug on your leg you became so wrapped up in his sincerity you wondered just how he was going to get you this time. You know, he could be telling the truth.........this time.)
---- so I asked "Who was that?" (Uncle Orville loved to go fishing and with his years of fishing and story telling experience knew when he had a nibble and just exactly when to set the hook.)
"Mr. Sesame." (he wiggled the bait)
Now at this point I didn't have any idea whether there was such a person as Mr. Sesame, but what the heck, there were a lot of people in this world with different and strange names and when you have a last name like mine you don't question anyone's name.
"You knew him?" (I was convinced and swallowed the bait.)
"Yes, I knew him so well he wanted me to go down to South America with him to do a little exploration, but I couldn't go. I was busy with something else." A long pause ----- "Damn, I should have gone with him." (He had now set the hook!)
"He went down to South America and found these sesame plants," (named after him, I assume, because he discoverd them), "brought them back up here to Sesame, Indiana, raised them and sold the seeds and made a fortune---
---Damn," he said as he raised one of those rolls, loaded with sesame seeds, to his mouth, "I should have gone with him."
Now with all the sesames I'd just heard, as a surname, plant and town, you'd think that that alone would convince anyone with half a brain, that this story was just a little fishy. But the believability is all in the technique. Never once did he break the serious look upon his face with even a hint of a smile. I didn't realize it then, but I had been in the presence of one of the Greats. A man who could probably have bluffed his way through and win with a single pair of deuces in any poker game with the devil.
Did You Know My Uncle Orville Knew Mr. Sesame?
Years later, in San Diego, I was seated across the table from my wife Emily, at an Italian restaurant eating a roll with sesame seeds on top and couldn't resist the temptation to tell the story ---
"Did you know my Uncle Orville knew Mr. Sesame?", I began very seriously, launching into the details of their acquaintance.
I thought I had her convinced until the very end of the story, but then I couldn't keep a straight face. (I didn't quite have my uncle's technique.) I broke into a little smile -- which was promptly followed by a kick to my shins. I continue to ask her that question every time we are in the presence of sesame seeded objects, but now always out of striking range.
If Uncle Orville were around today I know he'd swear he'd known Mr. Sesame -- and I'd still believe him.
Final Note---
Early on Sunday morning, June 21, 1970, a freight train of propane tanks cars traveling through Crescent City on the TP&W derailed and exploded in the middle of town. Luckily Uncle Orville and Aunt Hattie were visiting Carol and her family in Conneticut at the time. Unluckily, they returned to find the store, the house - everything they owned - burned to the ground. Uncle Orville's Edsel was destroyed and his silver dollar collection was found melted into a silver lump in the debris of their basement. Only our memories remain.
For details of this train accident, search the internet for fireball, train explosion and Crescent City, Illinois. Glimpses of the remains of their store and house, with its TV tower still standing, can be seen in some of the pictures and video taken that day.