A neighborhood store belonging to Sam and Selma Schofield sat directly across the street. The parking lot in front of the store extended to their house on the east. Their front door opened to that side, directly onto the lot, so there was almost no side yard and only a small section of lawn in front.
A small, one room building, off-centered behind their house and store, was an oddity in that its intended function was a mystery. It had a big front window, and might have functioned as a small office at one time. I vaguely remember attending a Halloween Party early on, but have no memory of it being used for anything other than storage. An orchard or field lay behind the mystery building, and ran some distance, nearly to Wildcat Creek. I don’t remember going back there very often.
The store was one big room and offered the bare essentials: a couple rows of canned goods, bread, milk, sodas and a small case with fresh meat. Selma ran the store with some help from her two daughters, Phyllis and Helen.
Helen was a year younger than Don, her sister, Phyllis, two or three years older. Sam drove a Standard Oil gasoline truck. He was a taciturn man, a bit gruff, and with no imagination that I could perceive, but I never had any meaningful exchanges with him, and can’t fairly comment on his dreams or aspirations.
The west side of Schofield’s place was an open field facing Sycamore. There was the big older house with a large covered front porch to their east, the one demolished a year after we moved there. Two more small houses sat between that and the by-pass. A guy bought one of them and developed a garden area behind he called “Perry’s Patch”, but the Stock and Schofield families were our closest neighbors, the most established.
By the early fifties larger food stores appeared that more closely resemble supermarkets of today, and our family usually went Sunday afternoons for the week’s supply of food. We did not shop at the store across the street other than for an occasional loaf of bread or items we were suddenly in need of. I remember we did buy a lot of cold soda’s at the store: Royal Crown cola’s (RCs) were often preferred by us kids over Coca-Cola because they were twice as big - twelve ounces as opposed to the six in the smaller Coke bottles of the day. They also carried Nehi sodas (orange, grape, and root beer), another common selection. Soda pops in cans did not appear for several more years, and all bottles had a deposit on them, 2 cents, so none were thrown away.
Grandma Frank worked as a cook in several restaurants in Kokomo before her retirement in 1948. Her Social Security income amounted to about $60 a month. She returned to work for a while when one of her previous employers opened a new restaurant, mainly, I think, because she wanted something to do. In 1954 she and Selma Schofield decided to expand the little store to include a drive-in. They pooled their money, purchased a commercial stove, a deep-fryer, a dozen serving trays, the type that attached to the window of an automobile, and opened for business.
Grandma was a good cook, but had no clue about advertising, signage, or marketing in general. Neither did Mrs. Schofield. I recall seeing only one customer. I happened to be hanging out at the store that day and got the job of taking the tray out to the car. I think they stayed open no more than a couple months. Selma got the stove and grandma stored the deep-fryer and trays in the basement. They were still down there many years later.
Phyllis married a local man and moved shortly after graduating form high school. Helen became a nurse and moved to Texas. Selma died in 1986 @ 83 years, and Sam passed some years ealier.
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