Porterdale Mill on the Yellow River NAMED for

Long Live  Porterdale!!!

Porterdale Mill on the Yellow River
NAMED for: Oliver S. Porter, Mill Owner

 

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DOWN MEMORY LANE
BY PRENTIS

Can you believe that the opening of a grocery store could bring excitement?  Well, in the real early 1940’s that’s exactly what happened in Covington, Georgia.  We lived in Porterdale and, as you know, Daddy always did all the shopping in our family, one day he came in and started talking about this new store.  Remember we got most of our news from Daddy, there was no TV, we didn’t subscribe to the newspaper and the radio was controlled by Mother and we didn’t listen much, except for a little while at night.  I think the reception was best at night in those days.  This was to be a really big store, you would have little carts that you would push around while you shopped,  there would be fresh fruits and vegetables, meat already cut and wrapped, and multiple check out counters, on and on about many other features.  I begged and begged for Daddy to take me along for the Grand Opening, he finally agreed.  I remember this opening was the talk of the town, everyone asking “have you heard???”  When the big day arrived I went with Daddy shopping to the big new “Piggly Wiggly”.  I thought that was a silly name for a store.  I will never forget when we entered the store how large it was.  There were so many ceiling lights, it was the brightest place that I had ever been in, and the floors were so bright and shinny.  The food was displayed so nice and there were so many items, I had never seen so much food.  The  place was real crowded and everyone talking about how nice it was and, of course, the prices were all too high.  All the front glass windows had been covered over, they were afraid that there would be to many people out on the street looking into the new store that that would interfere with customers. Remember until this time there were nothing but Mom and Pop stores out in small communities like Porterdale and Covington.  One other big store had come to Covington shortly before Piggly Wiggle, it was the A & P.  But in the A & P there were no bright lights, they had old oiled wooden floors, and there was not little carts to push around.  If your shopping list had quite a few items on it, you would leave it with the folks at A & P. and when you returned they would have “gotten up” your groceries and have them ready for you. The best thing about A & P was the smell of their 8 O’clock coffee.  You always had to grind your own coffee in those days when  you bought it, and the smell throughout the store, I thought was terrific. For a very long time Daddy had to go grocery shopping everyday.  You will have to remember most people went shopping every day or two in those days.  We did not have refrigerators, we only had ice boxes.  These Ice boxes were small and held very little, and then not for very long.  I guess that was  one of the reasons we did not have little carts to push around in the stores, there was not an adequate place to store the food once you got it home.

 

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