As we have been living out in the country for several years, I sometimes wish we had an old rolling store that came by several times a week to keep me stocked up on my provisions, mostly drinks, bottled water, bread and ice cream.
When I was growing up, I stayed several days in the summer with my grandmother in Montgomery County and there was a big yellow rolling store made from a big yellow school bus that came by her house once a week, always on Tuesdays. The driver was named Zeb ‘something’ and I tried my best to always be at her house on that day of the week.
She lived at the end of a long driveway/dirt road that turned off the county road and we had to walk quite a piece to get to the end. He always got to her house around ten o’clock in the morning and about nine thirty I would sit on her front porch in one of the old rocking chairs waiting to hear him grinding the gears on the old bus and listen for the “toot toot” of the horn as he clambered up the hill, letting us know he was on his way.
I’m sure the old bus had seen many miles and carried many children over the lifetime of the vehicle but none of that was as exciting as its new mission, that of being a traveling grocery store. Can you imagine as a child of maybe eight or nine years old how thrilled I was to board this wonder?
As soon as he swung the door open, I stepped into the travelling stockpile and my grandmother followed as she never knew what I might find. All the seats had been removed and, in their places, long wooden shelves had been built to hold the canned goods and other needs braced on the shelves by a thin looking open mesh wire. There were canned vegetables on one side which she never bothered with as she had canned her garden's bounty. She would always select a pretty cloth filled sack of self-rising flour, (those delicious biscuits), and I knew I would see this material again, probably in a dress for me or an apron for her. She would buy ground Foldgers coffee, RC Colas (for mixing with her glass of tea), Tide washing powders as she now had a wringer washer, and a few other things. Then she would go back to the front of the rolling store where Mr. Zeb kept his tobacco products. She would add several wrapped blocks of Bull of the Woods chewing tobacco and a couple cans of Garrett Snuff. The tobacco for her and the snuff for my granddaddy and Granny Key. As far as I know this was their only vices, chewing and spitting but they sure enjoyed rocking and spitting that tobacco juice.
On the days Mr. Zeb came by, we were always close to the dinner hour at noon and she would cook extra in case he had time to stop and eat with us. I loved this time as he would aways tell us some of the funny things that had happened to him on his journeys.
One of the things my grandmother made on those days was Pork Stew sand some of her buttermilk biscuits.
PORK STEW. – 1 ½ pounds of pork shoulder, 1 T. of fat, 1 small onion, salt and pepper to taste, 1 cup of peeled and diced potatoes, 1 cup of sweet potatoes peeled and diced, 1 cup diced carrots, 1 cup green beans, 4 cups chicken broth, 1 quart of canned tomatoes undrained. Brown pork on all sides in the fat and onion and remove and set aside. Add all ingredients and bring to a boil and then simmer for about 2 hours.
