Another shopping observation today

[moniss]

15. I kept the local dentist busy back then. There was a commercial

bakery in the Midwest called Gardner's. The little local general store in my unincorporated town had groceries, fence wire, fence posts, nails, bolts etc. and he put new glass in broken windows. His bread guy was a Gardner's and they also had bakery in thin cardboard trays that were cellophane wrapped. Frosted Jelly bismarks, donuts etc. I used to buy the tray of frosted jelly filled bismarks and wolf them down on a hot day with 2 sodas. There were like 6 of these in a tray and the cost with the 2 sodas was right around $1.50 or so. I remember the soda was about 15 cents each which included the 5 cent bottle deposit. The pastries were like 89 cents for the whole tray when I first started buying them. Cigarettes were 29 cents a pack and a six pack of Pabst would go for $1.65 regular price and even less on sale. If you bought a case of returnable bottles then it was just over $4.00 a case. Lower quality beer you could get for right around $1.00 for a six pack. This is before pop-tops.

I was working on the family farm and getting paid $1.00 an hour so I had money and no place to spend it other than at the general store. I bought garbage to eat like it was going out of style. Thought I was doing a good job of keeping that hidden until my visit to the dentist and he told my Mom how much the bill was going to be. I miss those bismarks.

This is the old original bakery building in Madison and it just closed about 7 years ago. Also a picture of what their bread trucks looked like. They had been around for 90 years.