The store that never let people go hungry (1930s)

Sharing family history of my grandparents' grocery store:

Mom's Dad Vista L. Mullan bought the grocery store at the bottom of the Waverly Street Bridge (Westernport, Maryland)  in 1929.

The store had a counter with drawers full of flour, sugar, cornmeal, coffee, dry beans and peas.  There was a meat block to cut meat and cheese.

Farmers brought fruits and vegetables in wagons.  Fresh fruit and eggs were sold from bushel baskets on the floor.

The cat nested on top of the 100 pound sack of flour.  The store had fish, raw oysters and home brew bottles exploding around the potbellied stove.  The candy case was loaded with tasty items.

Every Saturday the farmers came by with their horse and buggies with chickens, eggs and produce.

There were large barrels of products, from pickles to Carbide.

After the depression was over, notes with IOUs were found in the carbide barrels, most of which were never paid back.  Vista and Marie never let anyone go hungry.

Grandma Marie took over the store when Vista died in 1938.  She raised 4 kids and operated the store for 4 years, when she went to work inspecting bullets for the war effort.  Grandma sold the store to Marshall Jones when she remarried in 1944.

That's Mom as a teenager (2nd from right in back) in the bed of her Dad's delivery truck.

The photo above is from an exhibit at the Charleston (WV) Cultural Center.  It's a general store with more than groceries, but the pot bellied stove, the counter and drawers and "the smell of the freshly oiled floor" are how I envision the store.  And Grandma Marie always wore an apron!