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Troves & Tales

More than a corner store.

Super Saver was our trusted neighbor.

10-year-old me stood ready, flag in hand, change pouch in my pocket. I had just walked the five-minute stroll from my parents’ house on our dead-end street to the main road. It was time for the annual Independence Day parade.

But wait! I need a snack. A drink. A Twinkie! A quick run into our corner store and Super Saver saved the day!

The Super Saver corner store has been an East Buffalo staple for decades, and was a core fixture of my childhood. I passed it by everyday walking to and from school.

It stood tall, operating from the bottom level of a “house”, like so many shops and businesses of the 20th century. With a lone cashier station at the front and the large butcher section in the back, Super Saver had everything you needed in its handful of aisles.

I made many trips to that store whenever we ran out of something, especially in the crunch time of dinner prep. Milk, bread crumbs, an onion… For our family, Super Saver was the “neighbor” you went to for that “cup of sugar”.

And it was THE place to get raw beef liver to make liver and onions. Mom and Dad shopped at the big box grocer up the road, where they bought all kinds of chicken, beef, and pork. But if the menu called for liver and onions, Super Saver was the only store to buy it from.

I can still see the butcher in his white coat slipping four pieces of liver into a clear plastic bag and then wrapping it all up in paper before handing it to me over the meat counter. I made my way to the register, grabbing that can of bread crumbs from the shelf. With my ingredients in a brown paper sack, I walked out of the store, turned the corner, and headed home.

Dad and I sometimes popped in to Super Saver together after some other outing. There was a small parking lot behind the store that held about six cars. Dad squeezed his long sedan into a spot, and we walked around to the front entrance. A couple bananas, Dad’s pack of Erik’s cigars, and few lottery tickets were all we “needed”.

We scratched the scratch-off tickets before leaving the store, on a tall post next to the window. I recall many visits where Dad and I stood there for 30 minutes or more — scratching off winner after winner, $1 here, $5 there. We finally left after the winning stopped, or when we were lucky enough to win more than $20, or when we thought we’d get in trouble with mom for not being home yet.

Looking back, it’s quite possible these Super Saver visits with Dad were more custom than necessity.

A store like Super Saver was a dime a dozen back in that era. When the small chain of Wilson Farms “convenience” stores opened up a few blocks down, we were fascinated by its modern vibe. But I also remember neighbors’ comments about their lesser quality and service, and about concern they’d run Super Saver out of business.

Super Saver has yet to close, based on what I find in online searches. It has gone through phases of new ownership, and now has bars on its windows.

I wonder if the shop fosters the same warmth for its current community as it did for us back in the day. I hope that it does, and I’m glad the store is still in business. It’s one of the few remaining landmarks of the streets I called home.

Record Shop

Keeping up a facade.

The BEST company remains most…crooked?

The BEST company building in Maryland — demolished 25+ years ago — remains the straight-away winner of the “largest tilted facade for a shop”, according to Guinness World Records. Boasting a 5-degree slant, the facade was 73m long and weighed 450 tons.

Designed by James Wines and his SiTE architecture firm in 1978, it was one of nine buildings commissioned by BEST Products, Inc.. Sydney and Frances Lewis started BEST in 1957.

Both Lewises and the company were quite the art collectors. Much of the 20th century art they acquired is on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where you can snack at the namesake BEST café.

Learn more about the Lewis family here, and see Wine’s other eight BEST building designs here.

General Store

A century of Mallam’s in Mullumbimby

Australian family-run shop was a community hub.

When fellow shop owner Patsy Nossiter learned of Sue Mallam’s passing in 2021, she was deeply saddened. “Sue’s shop was two doors down from mine before she moved across the road,” Patsy reflected. “She always had a smile to greet you and some fascinating stories from her past.”

Those stories, we presume, included tales of Mallam family businesses and their impact on what some call “The Biggest Little Town in Australia”. Mullumbimby in New South Wales is about 400 miles northeast of Sydney. And for a century, it was home to what began as Geo Mallam & Co Pty Ltd..

Sue’s grandfather, George Septimus Mallam, opened his general store in 1904, later building a brick storefront to house it in 1910. By the 1930’s it was the hub of the farming community. In 1937, The Northern Star commended Mallam for seeing the town’s business potential, crediting his investment as playing “a great part in the establishment of the Mullumbimby of today.”

Historian Frank Mills recalls the original Mallam’s experience, one that seems ironically similar in some ways to the shopping experience we adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic:

(Zooming jam jars…early drive-through bank teller? Hmmm…)

With George’s three sons helping to manage the store, and its surrounding community adapting to mid 20th century society, Mallam’s shifted to a self-service shopping model. It eventually changed its name to Mallam’s Supermarket in the 1970s.

Sue’s mother, June — wife of George’s youngest son, Charlie — was also entrepreneurial. Around the same time Mallam’s was modernizing, she opened The Budget Shop — a women’s retail clothing store, later known as Fashion Corner. Sue eventually took over the shop, renaming it Sue M’s Boutique in 2011.

That same year, her grandfather’s store would close its doors for good. Mallam’s market was sold to Woolworth’s after plans to move to a bigger space at a new location drew pushback from local councils and businesses. Controversy seemed to come from all angles, including those desperate to preserve the way things had always been.

Australia’s Echo suggests Sue M’s Boutique still operates, offering store hours and a detailed listing, although the address doesn’t bring up results for it in Google Maps.

Regardless of the changes and closures, the Mallam family left an undeniable impact on its community through its stores. Like most neighborhood shops of an earlier era, Mallam’s had generations of actual moms and pops invested in providing meaningful service, and in caring about the lives and needs of their customers.

That kind of presence in a community lives on long after the doors are closed for good, in the stories people tell.

Like the stories poets told back in 1940 and again in 2004, of the Mallam’s embedded in their day-to-day, their culture, their roots.

And like the stories Patsy Nossiter tells about a special woman named Sue.

Playground

“Social” reminiscing — yay or nay?

Social media sites are full of discussion with many a user waxing nostalgic about the mom-and-pop / corner / general / local…...store / shop / pharmacy / bodega they grew up with. From Facebook to Reddit, to lesser known niche pages, there seems to be lively chatter across the internet.

Do you engage in online nostalgia discussions? If so, what do like about this kind of reminiscing? Is it a general sense of community and connection? Or a way to find specific old places or old friends? Or something else altogether?

Answer the poll, send us a note, leave a comment — or all of the above!

Off Road

This week’s finds:

• Heading to the Lone Star state? Texas Highways spotlights 15 mom-and-pop shops worth wandering to. Enjoy a “1932 Burger” and old fashioned lemonade at Owl Drug, while admiring its massive Elvis collection. Or pop into the Jefferson General Store to see why “Cliff Bode’s passion for collecting old things led him to buy a really old building in 1979.” There he and his wife gather, refurbish, and stock old books, toys, machines, and more. And of course, the Czech Stop is a must-stop. Wendy can attest — every kolache is delicious!

  

  Buy 5-cent coffee and play a game of checkers at Jefferson’s.

• Old-time pharmacies offered more than just drugs — they were the go-to for various supplies, community advice (or gossip), and that freshly made soda fountain root beer. So, what do you do when a museum created to preserve and recreate the nostalgic pharmacy experience also shuts down? You wipe away a tear and “visit” Minnesota’s Soderlund Pharmacy Museum via a handful of articles that captured it before it was gone.

  • Take a short walk with Kathleen Rouser through her 2011 museum visit. She writes about Soderlund again in 2015.

  • Learn about pharmacist Bill Soderlund’s passion for compounding drugs in a 2007 Connect Business Magazine spotlight.

  • Dive deep into vintage pharmacy history and collectibles in a 2008 Collectors Weekly interview with Bill, where he discusses show globes, bottles, and other drugstore antiques.

  

  Bill Soderlund stands proud in his Minnesota drug store and museum. (Photo source, L to R: Kris Kathmann; RoadsideAmerica.com)

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