The 'Hospital Shop' story
The General Store fondly known as ‘The Hospital Shop’ by Honi Hughes.
Dad’s motto, and mantra was ‘service with a smile’ so ‘heaven-help-us’ if we approached a customer with reluctance, reserve or ‘the black dog’. Every customer was shown the utmost courtesy, but some, were handled with reverence. The doctor’s wife was honoured with our best manners and our most gentile voice when she telephoned her weekly order through to the shop. Her choices of tinned pink salmon and asparagus spears were always on the shelf – just for her (when the rest of us thought that creamed corn was a decadent luxury.)
Another customer had to be treated with the utmost respect. He had been a Japanese prisoner-of-war and bore the legacy of his horrific survival. As a returned service-man himself, Dad showed great honour to this man and ensured that we kids were always extra polite to him. When an item that was ‘made in Japan’ was for sale, we had to make sure that he never saw it.
Dad hated the lolly counter with dithering kids agonizing over how to maximize the spending of their precious 3 pence or 6 pence. So by the time we were 10, my sister Tina and I were relegated to this lofty role. We, ourselves, were allowed to eat 6 pence worth of lollies a day, but, we certainly consumed a life-times worth of chocolate bullets, clinkers and cobbers. It’s a wonder that neither of us ended up being obese or having diabetes.
There were always plenty of jobs for us girls to do in the shop apart from serving the customers. Eggs had to be wrapped in newspaper – 3 eggs per half sheet of newspaper then carefully placed in brown paper bags holding one dozen eggs. Butter was wrapped in white paper and women’s sanitary pads were discreetly packaged, and modestly sold, from a quieter part of the shop. Processed rolls of meat, devon or garlic, were sliced with the turn of a handle on a slicing machine. Although our cats were banned from the shop, they would magically sidle up to us when they heard that handle turning. Hidden from the customer, we would slip a slice of meat down to the appreciative cat.
Before the school (Barraba Central) up the hill had its own tuck-shop, Mum made lots of lunches. Pies and sausage rolls came from the bakery but Mum made the sandwiches. Her curried egg recipe is still a family favourite. The bread had to be buttered from crust to crust, filled, generously garnished with salt and pepper, wrapped in grease proof paper, packed into a paper bag then marked with the hungry child’s name. When the Masonic Lodge held their monthly meetings, Mum made trays and trays of sandwiches. Their favourite filling was camp–pie with tomato sauce mashed through it.
Being in ‘The Shop’ gave us a broad education and general knowledge. Prices were added up on pieces of paper or in our heads (without a calculator), change given (without a cash register’s print out) and the move to decimal currency was a challenge met with a strategy. Dad’s ability to handle money was admired and gave us a love for the intricacies of mathematics.