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January 20, Wednesday - Took mom home with me for supper. Had a good meal. Doug took his checker test - missed 18!
January 21, Thursday - Marie sick today. Bud broke his cast - gets a new one tomorrow. Warm, started to rain tonight.
Mom's still dealing with the manager trainee Doug. It's becoming increasingly obvious that there's no love lost between them. This is not an unusual situation between trainees and head checkers.
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| Garvey Band Stamper |
Think back before beeping red laser scanners in grocery stores. When product came in the back door, it was checked in, the boxes (and sometimes the product) sliced open with box cutters, and each and every item in the store was price-marked using the old standby Garvey band stampers, or one of a whole rack of "stick stamps". Grocery clerks valued their stampers the way a gunslinger valued his Colt .45, and good clerks could price-stamp merchandise so fast, you almost couldn't see it happen. The point of all this is to make sure the store's merchandise is priced properly and legibly.
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| Monroe-Sweda Model 46 |
The cash registers were, at that time, the new Monroe-Sweda model 46s, a smaller, faster version of the old gigantic NCR models of the '50s.
The checker used a foot pedal to move the conveyor belt that the customer had piled his order onto, grabbed the item off the conveyor with his or her left hand, looked at the price, determined the proper department - grocery, meat, produce, liquor, health and beauty, etc - entered the information on the register without looking at the register, hit enter, and moved on. Each checker was expected to maintain the highest possible accuracy with the highest possible speed. (There were actual checking and bagging competitions where grocery clerks showed off their skills.)
To this end, checkers were periodically tested by what was called a "basket test" administered by a paid mystery shopper, or "checker's test" done by a company trainer. The best checkers in the business might miss one or two, like mom and her friend and coworker, Marie Cook. That her nemesis Doug missed 18 would doubtless have sent mom over the moon.
Tuesday TV in 1965: My Mother the Car, followed by Please Don't Eat The Daisies, but mom and dad were always there for The Red Skelton Hour at 8:00
I still don't remember Grandma Patton ever eating dinner with us, but I guess it must have happened. I know the meal was good because my dad cooked it. After he left the grocery business, he managed the bait business and kept house. He parlayed his experience with the meat markets to create some of the most remarkable meals from the crappiest cuts of meat. Dad could make a chuck roast as tender as filet mignon, and just as flavorful. Mom, however only ever cooked one thing: fried chicken. It was worth the wait.
Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated on January 20, but mom isn't likely to mention it. She and dad never felt like national politics had much effect on their real lives, and mom came from a hard-core Republican family. When grandma got a orange tabby that kept tearing up the house, she named him "Kennedy".
That plaster cast on my left foot was no match for Kansas City's wet, sloppy, winter weather and my bulky, 170 pound frame.
