Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family
history through old photographs.
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| Side of the Rucker Meat Shop, Shenandoah, Virginia photo from Shenandoah: A History of Our Town and Its People |
In 1900 when this photo was taken, the
thriving business advertised smoking tobacco “Standard of the World” alongside
a picture of a cow. It is difficult to discern whether the cow represented the
butchering business or the tobacco company, most likely the former although who
can forget that a camel was a popular mascot for its namesake brand.
The Rucker Meat Shop was not the only store in the
family. My great-grandfather Walter Davis opened a store at the corner of Sixth
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in the same little town of Shenandoah.
The Davis
store was just one empty lot over from where my mother grew up, so she spent
many an hour there while her mother waited on customers.
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| Davis Store 1920s |
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| Mary E. Davis and dog Fritz with a friend outside the Davis Store about 1939 |
The quality of my old photos is too poor to get a good
read on what was advertised in the windows or on the exterior walls. One sign says
“LEM-N BLENND.” At the time this photo was taken, Lem-n Blennd was either a
non-carbonated fountain drink, syrup, or candy. Apparently the concoction went
through various lives from its inception to its final sale to Heinz.
Inside the store, packaging and signs are even more
difficult to read. Fortunately, Duke’s mayonnaise, Hershey’s candy and Kellogg’s
cereal are easy to recognize.
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| My grandmother Lucille Rucker Davis behind the counter |
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| A better view of the Stud logo. |
There seems no easy or logical way to wrap up this blog
post, so I will leave you with something my mother always used to say: “Put
that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Please visit Sepia Saturday to read how others
interpreted the prompt.
Wendy
© 2019, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
So glad to have you back posting regularly - a good read as always!
ReplyDeleteThanks Carol. I appreciate your loyalty!
DeleteFunny, I loved the old photos, as well as your saying! The thing that most tickled me was the girls on the steps were wearing those old metal roller skates, for which you had to have a key (usually on a string around your neck, at least mine was!) Thanks for the tour of brands in the old store!
ReplyDeleteOh yes, I had the same kind of skates complete with key.
DeleteMy ancestors had a family store, as well, and I never thought to zoom in and see what they were selling! And my mom used the saying "Put that in your pipe and smoke it" too!
ReplyDeleteOn another note, do you post this straight from blogger or another tool? I've used Open Live Writer and had trouble with that last week and from what I'm reading, there are still problems. I like OLW so that I can put watermarks on my photos - how do you add yours?
I do my blogs in Word and then copy and paste into Blogger. I don't do any formatting (such as italics, boldface, bullets) nor do I add photos until I'm editing in Blogger. I edit my photos in Photoshop Elements where I add my url with the TEXT tool. My brother-in-law says I should make a REAL watermark but I don't know how.
DeleteI'm fascinated by the old stores.
ReplyDeleteBefore I forget, here's a link that should take you to a page on Amazon where the penguin bath toys are featured.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Color-Penguins-Pieces/dp/B000NVR3JW
There were some other penguin toys, but those are listed there for $19.99. If the link doesn't work, google "penguin bath toys in set of 6 that teaches colors and shapes" and it should come up. He loves it!
Interesting about the stores. I remember growing up there seemed to be a small family own store on almost every corner (not literally but you get the idea). I have heard that expression "put that in your pipe and smoke it" before but not sure what it exactly means, LOL :)
betty
Thanks for the link - ordering today!
DeleteThe expression usually follows some story or explanation that you are supposed to ponder.
Bravo! A great match! Brand names on packaging have changed so that it's hard sometimes to find the thing you want hidden in the enormous variety of competitor brands. How long do you think that cow stayed on the Rucker Meat Shop building?
ReplyDeleteThe building was torn down in 1920. I imagine it was still there until then anyway.
DeleteI've said it before, but it's so neat that you have so many pictures of your family history. The store photos are treasures...and what a fun post showing the products of that time. I especially love the photo of the girls on the steps with their roller skates...I loved those skates, key and skinned knees memories.
ReplyDeleteI like the photo of the girls too. I can almost hear the giggles.
DeleteNeat pix all - but my favorite has to be the two girls sitting on the stoop wearing those old buckle-on roller skates! Boy, do I remember those. I won a prize once for being the most graceful skater in a contest. Funny thing - I was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a plain old tee-shirt. Some of the other girl skaters were wearing little short twirly skirts &/or complete skating outfits, but the judges apparently saw past those 'detractions'? Whatever, I thought it was pretty 'cool' I won in my tee-shirt and jeans. :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think sometimes fancy outfits are an attempt to hide the lack of skill or talent.
DeleteI love the little Davis store. It's hard to believe so much was crammed into a building that looks so small. The inside of the store looks so interesting -- a shop I'd like to poke around in, though I doubt they let people poke around even in those days -- and the photos have so many details you were able to ferret out by enlarging. Wendy, I think you must have photos for every theme ever invented! It's wonder that you come from a family who took so many photos and snapshots.
ReplyDeleteHA - I really don't have a picture for every theme, but sometimes I can be creative and force a link. More recently I've skipped Sepia Saturday because I feel like I've told all the stories I can associate with a certain picture. I'm determined to keep trying though.
DeleteI love it when I can zoom in and find this little details like you were able to do with the store photos. It add so much context to the picture itself. Those girls are pretty cute. I wonder if they were giggling about the puppy or having their picture taken - or did someone say something funny?
ReplyDeleteIt seems lately I've been doing a lot of zooming to find the details. And I have often wondered what was so funny too. It would have been a logical question to ask my mother, but did I? Of course not!
Delete