THAT WONDERFUL LITTLE "RED AND WHITE STORE"

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CLOVIS REMEMBERED
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It is hard to say how much quaint little "mom and pop" grocery stores on corners in nice little New Mexico towns affect the great overall cosmic scheme, but I'll tell you that Tom Phelp's Grocery,  at 421 W. Grand was a major deal in the lives of little kids, all around that area. His store was easily spotted by them,  for it was a white store with RED TRIM!

We called it simply: "THE RED AND WHITE STORE."

Tom was a very tall man, particularly with that white meat market/chef' type hat he wore. To little kids three and a half feet tall, he seemed about six feet--six! He was a kind-looking man, all dressed in white shirt and apron; and though I didn't know the word at that time, I guess you'd say he was rather laconic...not given to shooting the breeze with five year olds. He lived in the back of the store with his wife, and once I was sent on some scary errand that required my knocking at his side (back) door, though now I can't remember what it was.

Why do things and events from the 1930's seem so quaint and interesting to us today?  Maybe things were just so much simpler: no TV, no cell phones (twittering tweeting, texting); no computers, and in fact--- not everybody had phones, and if you did, you gave a number to an operator who asked "number please?" and then you were on a party line.

So it was in those long ago simpler times in the spring of 1938, that we moved to Clovis and into an old house behind the MAGIC STEAM LAUNDRY, 313 W. Grand Ave.  My Dad was the new owner and would run the laundry until the end of WWII.  The "Red and White Store" was a handy block and a half west, on the south side of W. Grand, and on the corner.

We bought our main groceries elsewhere at a big store up on Main Street but often I was sent to Tom's to get a loaf of bread, quart of milk, or a pack of Avalon smokes (@ 9 cents) for my Dad, and I always tried to scavenge several cents in change for some jaw breakers, suckers, or other penny candies. Tom did have a very nice clean little meat market with the floor back there all covered with fascinating sawdust. Seems like we occasionally bought a little bacon from him.

How the habit got started, I'll never know, but somehow I had become a five-year-old Wrigley's chewing gum junkie. Any kind---Doublemint, Spearmint, Juicy Fruit...even Chiclets, Beeman's, Dentyne, or maybe licorice-flavored Black Jack---CHOMP CHOMP---but Juicy Fruit was my biggie! Tom sold all of these at the Red and White. Now and then I managed a nickel for a pack.

We kids were always trying to get the parents to spring for some candy bars. Most of them were five cent bars, in those days, and now and then, my mother would decree that it was candy-bar-time and would give us 20 or 25 cents for  favorite candies for all. Hers just happened to be a coconut bar called "Best Pal." It was a whopping 10 cents! My favorite candy bar has always been a Snickers.  My Dad was so busy trying to make a living that he didn't care one way or another about the candy, but would usually eat a Hershey. Others that we ate were: Baby Ruth, O Henry, Milky Way, Bit 'O Honey, and Butterfingers.

Then WWII came and we never saw a stick of Wrigley's for four years. For that matter, there were none of the great candy bars, either, that I can remember. So as time passed, and the war went on, and we moved up on Reid Street into a new house, we kind of quit going to the "Red and White Store." Then Dad sold the laundry in 1945, and we were not in that area of town anymore.

For many years, when visiting Clovis, I'd drive over that way. The re-routing of the highway had wiped out a lot of the old landmarks, but the "Red and White Store" was stilt there! Who owned it (maybe still Tom), I didn't know.

Even today, 75 years later, that little store lives fondly in my memories.

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BY MIL
9/26/12







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