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I read with
interest, nostalgia, and some sadness the recent letter to the editor
from the Reverend John Webb a few weeks ago, concerning the closing of
Cindy Prescott’s Dollar Smart Store on old
Cache Road . The references John made to the
"family business" and "mom and pop" store touched my heart in a way that
is hard to describe because it took me back to my very roots at Ken’s
Grocery at Cache. I cannot think about growing up in Cache without
thinking about Ken’s because it was, in reality, my second home.
My mom and dad, Ken
and Joyce Maloy established Ken’s in 1948. We hear today about mentoring
and being a mentor to others, as if it is a new concept. My parents had
a mentor in Earl Mercer for whom they had both worked at Liberty Heights
Grocery in
Lawton after World War II when my
dad returned from the Navy (I hope I’m getting the family history right
here – I wish I’d listened to these stories much closer than I did).
Earl had heard about a little store at Cache that was for sale and
thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for a young couple with two
small children to get a start in owning their own business. He provided
some financial help, as did a woman from
Lawton in order for them to borrow
as much money as they possibly could, to buy what was then Norris’
Grocery at Cache.
Ken’s. Because of
the name, many of the Cache folks called my parents Mr. and Miz Ken. It
was, indeed, my home. I was there as much as possible because that’s
where my parents were. I loved being at, "the store".
High school baseball
games were as much a part of summer as were bus trips to
Doe Doe
Park for swimming lessons. It was at
one of the games that I managed to fall out of a tree and break my leg.
As my parents were both working in the two or three days following my
fall, they fixed me a cot on the north wall of the store so that I could
stay up there with them until I could return to school. It was great! I
lay there all day, reading "funny books", drinking Dr. Peppers and
getting visited by everyone walking in the door.
For many years at
those summer baseball games there was always one uniform with "Ken’s
Grocery" written across the back – the uniform that Ken’s provided to
the team. There were other names on uniforms as well – Webber’s Ice
Dock, Britton’s Grocery. In the wintertime, it wasn’t unusual for some
boy on the basketball team to sport a new pair of tennis shoes, provided
by Ken’s and the other merchants. There were always yearbook
advertisements to buy, donations for school activities, Christmas treats
for the kids at Christmas – Ken’s was a part of the community.
My first job was at
"the store" emptying the bottle cap holder in the bottom of the coke box
– the caps were always wet and yucky. I progressed in responsibility to
stocking shelves, cleaning onions, making sale signs, delivering
groceries to elderly customers when I got my drivers license, finally
managing to learn to work the adding machines and cash register. In the
summer, I would get up early and go with my dad to deliver groceries to
the Girl Scout camp at Sunset Camping Area in the
Wichitas . In fact, that’s when I
learned to drive, on the trips home from those deliveries.
I learned so much at
that little store. I learned job skills but even more, I learned
honesty, compassion, dependability, responsibility, the value of work
and the importance of giving back to the community. That’s what a local
business does – it is part of the community, helping it to grow, helping
to make it a better place for all to live, not just a place to make a
profit.
My dad, Ken, died 24
years ago on December 1. My mother died in February of 1992. My sister
and her husband have kept the little store going. It was many years
before I walked in the store and my eyes didn’t automatically go to the
meat case searching for a glimpse of a man in a paper butcher’s hat and
white apron – more times than not, whistling as he worked back there. If
I listen, I can still hear my mother laugh as she did so many times
standing at the checking stand visiting with this customer and that one.
Maybe their spirits are there – I don’t know. I do know only so well
what John Webb was saddened by in his realization of the passing of the
mom and pop, family businesses, as they buckle to the competition of
large corporations. It is an era gone by – when we didn’t have credit
cards but folks could put their purchases "on the book" and pay at the
end of the month. When people who had charges would come and tell my
father, after the store had burned to the ground in the early fifties
and everything was lost –"Ken, I think I owed you a little ticket and
want to pay it". We have something important in the interconnectedness
that a "mom and pop" store brings to a community - and we lose that
tangible evidence of our interdependence when we lose it. I know – I
learned it at Ken’s -that little store was more to me than a way to make
a living – it was a way to make a life. |
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