I forgot about a summertime job I had until today, when I saw a query on Ancestry.com, searching for a long lost relative. Not that the job wasn't memorable, as I have often thought and spoke of the people and places, but simply because I just didn't write about it.
I was about 14 or so. In those days, you didn't need a notarized document from the school or the state or anyone else. A phone call or a short talk with your parents was sufficient and you could start working. Nobody was going to place you in a hazardous job, and if you fell down the stairs at the store, you would be taken care of, but nobody was going to sue the store owner or the insurance company either. It was the time of a handshake and trying to give a kid a "leg up" in the world and let him or her earn a few bucks so they could enjoy their free time. Not a bad idea as it kept many of us off the streets and out of trouble, not that our parents would have let us stray too far off the straight and narrow back in the late 50's anyway!
My dad had worked for Henry Krumwiede part time picking up and delivering goods in the early 1950's and they had remained friends for many years. I think after about 1954 or so was when my dad stopped that part time work, or so it seems.
Henry always seemed a little gruff when you first met him, but that was just his facade. He was a very nice man, and I think he kept that up to avoid people thinking he was a soft touch. Mrs. Krumwiede, I believe her first name was Helene, was a very nice, jovial lady, always dressed very nicely, looked like she was ready for shopping or dining out, and she loved cats, although I never believed Henry liked cats very much. There were cats everywhere in the back of the store, but they never ventured into the customer areas. The worst extra work they ever made for us was cleaning some cat fur off a case of soda or two when pulling bottles for the display. They sure were clean animals and Mrs. Krumwiede always took good care of them.
To a kid, this was almost heaven. The dream job. Working in Henry Krumwiede's store on Sanford Avenue. Krumwiede's sold party supplies, as it later was known, but to most it was the pretzel and potato chip store. They received hundreds of large cans of pretzels of all shapes and sizes, potato chips, popcorn and even peanuts, and sold them by the large bulk can, or by the pound where they were metered out by hand into hanging scales and ever so gently slid into glassine bags, and closed with a stapler. The customer had so many choices, pretzel sticks, rings, large and small twists, nuggets, "butter bretzels", and rods. Potato chips were regular, barbecue and rippled. Popcorn was regular and that wild new cheese flavor. And, peanuts, as I recall, were just that, salted peanuts in the shell.
But wait...that was just the tip of the iceberg! There was all flavors of soda stacked on the floor in the back room and in racks in the front of the store, waiting to fill those 12 bottle cases with the 5 cent glass bottle deposit. There were Berry's Biscuits, thin mints, Rockwood chocolate wafers, assorted candy, Van Houten chocolate bars, Wylers Lemonade Mix, and lots more. Then there was Hershey's Ice Cream in quarts and those now gone Sky-Hi Cones. That was 1/8 of a quart of Neapolitan ice cream which was specially wrapped in slabs, and unwrapped and placed in a special ice cream cone that held it vertically, all for a nickel. Of course there were nickel ice cream bars, but that Sky-Hi cone held a fascination for many kids, and even in a store that sold mostly bulk items, many of those cones were sold.
A "perk" of the job was cold soda always in the refrigerator in the back room, and discounted prices on just about everything. Plus, if you didn't mind stale pretzels or popcorn or chips, you could eat all you wanted from the throw-aways. LOL. We didn't but I assure you everyone probably tried once or twice. Nothing like rancid chips, (they didn't use stabilizers and preservatives back then...the shelf life was short) stale pretzels and popcorn that seems soggy.
Empty popcorn, pretzel and potato chip cans were stored in the cellar and the only way to get there was, as usual in those days, a stairway under metal doors in the sidewalk in front of the store. The normal, if you can call it that, way of moving stock up or down was one person at top and bottom and tossing the cans up or down, since even a full potato chip can weighed only about 5 lbs or so; pretzels somewhat more. Big problem one evening was one of the BIG popcorn cans that was supposed to be EMPTY WASN'T! The tosser at the top threw it to me and it hit the edge of the cellar door support before coming the rest of the way down...without its' top. Do you have any idea what 5 lbs of popped popcorn looks like coming down on you? A freaking blizzard! Not only that, but now you have to figure out how to clean this mess up, and the tosser is telling you it's your fault because you didn't catch it, and you're yelling it's her fault because she can't throw.
The issue becomes one of who's going to catch hell for this mess? The gal or me? Honestly, neither one of us did. Mrs. Krumwiede howled with laughter and said she wished she had been there to see our faces when it happened; and that the cans were old popcorn and not for sale so nothing was really damaged anyway; someone forgot to dump them before sitting them with the other cans. A very kindly lady!
I spent most of what I made at the store on Wyler's Lemonade Mix, (I was as addicted to that pale yellow powder as anyone could get to anything, I guess, but it wore off after one summer...whew..no detox for me!) chips, pretzels and other things. It was a great summer and the one and only one I worked there. I went back there many times after to buy things and over the years nothing really changed until one day the little store was closed. I don't know whether Henry died or simply sold the store, but a piece of my Americana was gone and remained only in memory!
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