For The Love Of Old Grocery Stores....

Oh maaaan....I miss old style grocery stores. I miss the garish lighting, gaudy colors and the entrance doors with the rickety metal dividers. I miss the pastel produce cases and the real fishnets full of plastic replicas of crabs and swordfish in the meat/seafood department. I miss the shiny vct (most likely asbestos) square tiles, the check cashing/courtesy booth and the cluttery decor. I miss the hand painted signs on white butcher paper and the 'cha-ching' sound the clunky cash registers made. By the time the 70s rolled around and I was was shopping in there, these places were beginning to lose their luster. They were still wonderful, but the lighting was dingy and floors were stained & crumbly in places. the pastel produce cases were out of style in a brown world and the carts were squeaky & had bad wheels. Eventually the clunky cash register would be replaced by the kind that beeped and the front door electronics were failing, making them sticky & hard to open. I didn't care, I loved them just the same. Obviously I still do. I'd give my eye teeth for one more trip to 'Bob's Thrift' on 33rd and Perry to buy a Mad magazine, some 'Grease' bubble gum cards and a package of wax bottle candy. Unfortunately, it will never be possible because Bob's is now a Library.

When I was going through some of those vintage mags for scanning, I came across an ad featuring my childhood nemisis: Salmon Loaf!
Oh I can remember it plain as day, but I never thought I'd be forced to look at it ever again. This is just like my Great Aunt Hilda used to make, only without the lemons.
Not only did Aunt Hilda live in a time warp, she cooked in a time warp as well. I call it depression era cooking...all sorts of bits and scraps added to things, some leftover and some not. Odd combinations....
She would make stuff like cream of wheat with EGG...oh yuck. I'd always refuse that one, and she would get so mad at me. Sometimes she would put the egg in it and then some CHERRY PIE FILLING or CAKE MIX. I'm not even joking. She was famous for cooking steak and vegetables together in a blackened frying pan on the stovetop. They would come out so rubbery and set off the smoke alarm every time! By far the grossest thing she ever cooked was the salmon loaf.......I used to dread Fridays because being the good Catholic she was, it was fish day...and more often than not that meant salmon loaf. The recipe calls for bread crumbs, but I know she used saltine crackers sometimes. Then it would be sickningly soggy. I don't want to think about what else she might have thrown in there... I used to ask my friends if they had ever eaten salmon loaf and NONE of them had, they hadn't even heard of it. Have you? I wish I hadn't. Well, I would try hard to choke it down and mostly I succeeded until this one time. The last time I ever ate salmon loaf I was about 9 years old. I ate the loaf and then I began to feel woozy. Little did I know I was about to be hit with the worst stomach flu of my young life. I mean I thought I was going to die my stomach hurt so bad. You know, salmon loaf has a hard time sitting well in a healthy stomach, so this time it didn't stand a chance. I won't gross you out with the details, but let's just say that to this day I cannot stand to smell, let alone eat salmon. In fact, I get the jitters just looking at that picture......