What are you nostalgic for? This is the question posed in the current issue of Real Simple magazine, and I found my answer in a 30-year-old prize-winning essay.
What Are You Nostalgic For?
When I was a freshman in high school, I worked on a regular assignment in my English class. I think the prompt was either a memory or a piece that used all five of your senses.
I recalled a memory from circa 1982, when I was four years old, and wrote about it in detail. The 14-year-old me didn’t realize she would win her first writing prize for this essay.
Reading it again last night, I was taken back to this sweet memory. And if I can say so, I was impressed with my own attention to detail as a teenaged writer. I hope you enjoy this story as much as my junior high English teacher did, who to this day stops me in the grocery store to tell me how much she loved it.
The Little White Store
by Sarah Fluegge, 9th grade at R. O. Hawkins Junior High School in Jackson, MO
(Honorable Mention in the 1992 Southeast Missouri Writing Achievement Awards, presented by Southeast Missouri State University)
I remember the little white store very clearly. It is a vivid memory of my childhood. It may have been only a place to buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk to some people, but it meant much more to me than just that.
I once lived very close to the grocery. My mother, sister, and I would take strolls on lazy summer afternoons. Holding hands, we would step down from the cool gray porch of our sunshine-yellow house and start out on our little journey to the grocery.
On the way there, we would have a friendly “Hello!” to Reverend and Mrs. Krahn, our neighbors. My mother would then give me a shiny quarter to buy goodies at the grocery with. It felt warm in my small hand and had a magical shimmer as I tilted it in the sun.
We would giggle happily about silly little girl things on the way to the grocery. My long, light-brown pigtails would swing and bounce in the gentle breeze. My sandals slapped against the gritty, hot sidewalk as we walked along. The birds sang for us in the giant, soft green, shady oak trees on Bast Street. Finally, we reached the little store.
It was a very small, quiet building with white paint chipping off of its wooden sides. The front had a little white porch held up by a few rickety old posts. The upstairs windows had white polka-dotted yellow chiffon curtains, so I knew someone lived upstairs. The black edges of the windows and gutters stood out sharply against the white of the building.
Protruding out from the porch was a small, white, square sign simply stating “Popp’s Grocery” in bold, block lettering. Overall , the little grocery was plain on the outside and was a place most people had driven by for years but had never noticed it standing there. But for me, it was a very special place to go.
We went inside and the magic began. It was dark inside, so it took a minute for my eyes to focus from being outside in the bright sunlight. Rows and rows of candy lay in front of me. All kinds of candy imaginable, from M&M’s to Charleston Chew, lit up the glossy brown shelves of Popp’s Grocery.
As our mother conversed with the clerk, my sister and I stood agog facing the candy, choosing the type that we wanted to spend our quarters on. I almost always picked Sixlets, tiny colored balls of sweet chocolate covered in crunchy shells.
Our mother bought necessities like crackers or tea at the store. If it was an especially hot day, we would get the ultimate treat – a bottle of cold soda. We would pick one to share between all of us. We would usually pick grape, strawberry, or orange-flavored soda out of the dusty Coke machine that lit up when you put money in the silver slot. I would keep the bottle cap and squeeze it in my palm until the curved points dug into my flesh.
It would then be time to leave the magic grocery store, filled with products of my imagination and all of the sweet candy children envision. We would bashfully say good-bye to the smiling clerk with black-framed glasses.
On the way home, we let the fizzy, sugar-laden soda trickle over our thirsty tongues. We would stop to admire and ponder the tiny ants and their homes made of sandy dirt. I would then skip the rest of the way home, enjoying my Sixlets and feeling the warm sun tanning my shoulder and the gentle breeze blowing through my cotton sundress.
The little store has now been renovated into two apartments. It is repainted and reshingled with two black mailboxes hanging sullenly on the front. The sign has vanished. Many people still don’t know it is there but drive by it daily.
I do not live on Bast Street any longer. However, bright memories of the little white store still linger in my mind. My memory dances when I remember the place that represents a happy piece of my childhood – the little white store.
Why This Memory Is Special Now
As I was retyping this essay, I recalled the taste of Milde’s soda, a delicious cream soda that was locally bottled and sold at Popp’s Grocery. I have not tasted it in nearly 40 years, as it is no longer produced. But I hope God has preserved a few bottles of it for me to enjoy in heaven someday!
This memory is special for several reasons. It is a snapshot of a happy time right before my parents divorced, and my world was destroyed. I had to cling to happy memories like that one as life rafts of hope in the chaos that ensued for decades afterward.
It’s also special to me now in 2022, because several extended family relationships have been shattered beyond repair in the aftermath of my recent divorce. It’s good to reflect on better times, when I didn’t know what was ahead. Though I’m not seeking reconciliation now, I can honestly and genuinely smile at this memory, and thank God for reminding me of a sweet time in the past.
So my answer to “what are you nostalgic for?” is: Sixlets and Milde’s cream soda. I’d love to hear your answers in the comments below or this Facebook post.
What Are You Nostalgic For?
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