Monday, March 1, 2010

Fire Destroys Iconic Grocery in Elliottstown,Il.



It was sad to see this local landmark burn down a couple weeks ago. It had been a grocery store for over 40 years before being turned into an apartment complex. It held many fond memories for a close friend of mine (Steve Endebrock) who's grandparents had ran the grocery store all those years. Most kids today don't remember these types of grocery stores at all. The ones with all kinds of candy, cool advertising signs, and glass soda bottles filled with grape, orange, strawberry and chocolate. It was also a place you met and talked to your neighbors, a slower place in time, or some might say a better place in time. This place reminded me of a time period that I was into collecting antiques & bottles. Steve and I spent many a day bottle hunting & searching for those metal advertising signs. It brought back alot of good memories, like the time we carried a sign over our heads, in shin deep mud, about a half mile back to our vehicle. We found some pretty cool stuff in those days, original advertising signs for Sunbeam Bread, Dr. Pepper, Shell, Gargoyle and I'll never forget Steve's biggest treasure, a couple sets of hard plastic or ceramic coffee cups with a straw or bamboo weave design inside them. I laughed at the time, but I have to admit I still use the set he gave me some 10 years later. He said they reminded him of the cups he drank out of at his grandmother's house when he was a child. We should all be so sentimental and nostalgic. It's always sad to see another landmark destroyed...but the memories of the past are safe and sound in our hearts and can never be taken from us.

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