Piggly Wiggly, Down Home, Down the Street

Well, only for a few more days and then Piggly Wiggly is gone for good.

When I was a little girl I lived in El Paso, Texas. Across the street a ways was the local Piggly Wiggly and that is where we shopped for the necessities. For me it was chocolate candy, but for mom it was milk and eggs.

When we moved from El Paso, I never thought of it again until I met Huny and started visiting him in Denton. The directions he gave me that first time were to take a left where Piggly Wiggly is on the corner. Huh? I'll be durned - there it was - a Piggly Wiggly on the corner.

After I moved to Denton, the Pig was the place to stop for that one thing I needed for supper that night, milk for the morning cereal, or to do some grocery shopping. Even though the prices were kind of high on some things, I shopped there as much as possible because I have always been a big supporter of the local mom and pops. I always hit the vege aisle first because they would take their "day-old" veges and bag them up for $1.00! I saved a lot of money doing that and I got some good stuff too. Pigs carried a lot of local vendors in the store so that was even better. The regular employees had been there forever - some over 30 years - and slowly we got to know each other and they became somewhat of an extended family.

A few weeks ago I noticed that some things were going away - the magazines, books. The canned coffees were not being replenished - things like that. Slowly I started to hear rumors that the store was in trouble. Last week there were signs all over the place of 30% off - STORE CLOSING!

SADNESS!!

It all having to do with a bankruptcy. A local buyer was looking to buy, but that fell through.

So now, another neighborhood store is closing. I'll have to go to the big box chain grocery stores where I won't know the cashier and the cashier will be too busy to get to know me. I may have more of a variety, but at what cost? It just doesn't seem worth it to me.

I'll miss this icon of another time, the local neighborhood grocery store.