Ever since I was a little boy, I could recall Mabel shopping at Pa's grocery shop. We used to say that you could set noon on the store clock to her arrival. She always dressed modestly, purse over her shoulder, and a page of coupons from the local newspaper neatly tucked into her wallet. I would follow her around each time she came, helping her get the ingredients for her famous casseroles. My, even now so many decades later, I can still remember the ingredients off the top of my head: salt, milk, onion, beef, tuna, cream cheese.... She watched me grow from an awkward young boy to a strapping young man, and I watched her age gracefully until she was like a grandmother to all the boys who had grown up in the town. No longer did I skip after her, fetching what she needed, now I practically ran the store while Pa was off in 'Nam. I made sure to give her a little discount on all the food she bought, but I never told her- surely she'd berate me for treating her unnecessary kind. But her casseroles! I would be steeped in sin if I said a cross word about them. I asked her one time how she made them so delicious. I knew her recipe by heart, I said, had known it for years since I was a boy. But I never could imagine anyone could have taken such mundane ingredients and turn them into the savory bits of ambrosia that would make even the Devil hisself cry tears of joy. She smiled at me, patted my shoulder, and said, "Oh Charlie, you can't just sell the secret to cooking off the shelf. It's got to come from the heart." And I never doubted her. Maybe she added something special that couldn't be found in your average grocery shop or maybe all she put in was a touch of homespun love. Whatever it was, I no longer cared. Even when times were hard, she still made her weekly run. Even when the big chain stores opened up and offered produce at lower prices, she kept on shopping with us. It was like she was the voice of the people, a irreplaceable part of the small-town community that we grew up in. Nothing could have made us sadder than Chippy's announcement that Mabel had taken ill. For once, in decades, we no longer had her radiant smile herald in the Saturday afternoons. Even though that year there was the worst snows of the century, I would walk over to her house and deliver whatever groceries she needed. And my, how she did bake. She must have churned out hundreds of casseroles. And when she passed, I closed the shop for the first time in decades as well. A day without Mabel was not a day worth doing business at all.
It's been many a long year since I retired moved to my sister's town. But still, everytime I pass by a Mom and Pop grocery, I get the urge to stop inside, pretend I am ten all over again and Mabel has just arrived.
