“Hi Morrie,” I say for the third time that day, like I’ve said (what feels like) a million times before, and a gazillion more to be uttered in the future. Morrie is behind the small counter that divides the work area from the guest area. He is surrounded by cigarettes, can openers, paper products, myriads of cans and jars of ingredients, and is shielded by the imposing NCR and rows of penny candies: Mary Janes, Bazooka, Bit o Honeys, Dots, Snickers, Mallow Bars, Snickers, and the list goes on, but my favorite was Sixlets. I loved to pop one tiny little orb in my mouth at a time – all greens, all browns, save the reds for last. Morrie was the provider of all things necessary to all the people in the neighborhood. The tightly packed, floor to ceiling, aisles contained everything from soup to bolts that one might need in a pinch. Morrie carried it all.
This was the days before everyone shopped at big grocery chains for their daily staples. Before 7-11s and White Hens took over in-and-out purchases, most people went to the supermarket once a week, and anything needed in between came for Morrie’s, or some other of the ilk.
Where I lived, in lower-middle class Chicago, we had three such establishments, but Morrie’s was the one we most frequented – and I mean I frequented frequently. Morrie’s corner store was the bane of my little existence, as I was on the end of my father’s command, “Go get me a pop.” Pop for those of you who don’t know, is soda, as in soda pop. Midwesterners call it pop, but I picked up the Southern speak of “sodie” when I was on vacation in Missouri, but now I call it soda. Anyway, my father drank oceans of saccharin laden Tab. For some reason, these could only be bought one at a time, and seemed to taste better when I was the one to fetch them, so I saw Morrie more than I cared to. I was the Tab beast of burden. Perhaps it was my dad’s way of keeping tabs on me.
Corner stores were wonderful. They were usually family-owned with the family living and working all in their compacted wonderland of appurtenances of life. Morrie and his family lived upstairs from the store, where he, I imagine, walked bleery eyed down the steps at 5:00 am to open, and crawled sleepy eyed back up at the 9:00 pm hour. He never left the place. The two other stores nearby were far less impressive, and far more modern, in that they were not manned by one such as Morrie, and they had several family members with which to share the day, and one of them even had employees! Morrie was like family to everyone. He sort of looked like the “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin guy,” and if you don’t know who that is – google it.
Another frequent request of Master Dad was to change the channel on the television. Man, I hated that! “Laura, turn on channel 5,” or “Why’s it so loud? Turn the tv down, Laura.” Remote controls did not exist in my household so I was the remote control, and, I tell ya, he certainly knew how to push my buttons. In this world of multiple remotes that man everything one owns, I wonder what kids are doing with their dads nowadays.
My dad wasn’t lazy. No, he just felt like it was easier for me to do than it was for him – and admittedly, it was, wasn’t it.
Never once did I ask my son to turn down the tv or run to the store, although he probably would have done it as I did – without comment (well maybe a little one escaped).
As I am studying slavery, I started thinking about that time of my life. I felt like he was treating me like a slave.
It’s funny how our perspective is when we are young. We know little of the big world around us, and images on a screen, or seeing in books are not knowing the world.
In school, we learned that slavery was banned by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, January 1s to be precise, but in 1970s America, we were removed from the slavery known in the past by many generations. Slavery, where people had zero rights, and zero personal ownership, who had their dignity taken and debased daily, with little to no justice or recompense, that we (as white Americans) think so little of and have the privilege we took (and take?) for granted. This is a reality that makes me ashamed to think that I was, without even a modicum of accuracy, a slave. Kid’s feel like things are out of their control, and often they are to a certain degree right, but the motivation of parental requests are usually couched in love, whereas, the slave, the one bought as property, was seated in the owner’s right to treat their “property” in any manner they chose. This is a power that one person should never have over another.
Spilling Marbles 