Uncle Lou's country store

In a recent posting I spoke about the small country stores around Sacramento before the introduction of the modern Supermarkets.  My Uncle Lou (cousin LuAnn’s father) owned one of those stores and lived in the home behind it with my Aunt Eleanor and their three daughters, LuAnn, Patty, and Sally.  Uncle Lou was a pioneer in the change from a system where the grocer collected all the items to a system where the shopper selected their own goods from stocked shelves.

There was a small stream that ran behind their property and, after visiting Google Earth, I just realized it was the same stream that I rafted on when I was 10 years old.  Of course, by the time of my adventure, they had moved on to bigger and better things.

65 years later, the store and the home behind it are still there, albeit a bit rundown compared to their heyday in the 50’s.

The front façade of the store has changed, but the size looks about right.  I guess Uncle Lou would be a better judge, but even though I was very young and had only been there a couple of times, I think I recognize everything.  It is the same country store shown in the background of the following photo of my mom and dad taken in early 1946.  It appears as though the new owners kept the same name.

Long after the family had moved from the store and its adjacent home, I had the opportunity to have Thanksgiving dinner at their new home.  It was a sprawling ranch style affair, and I remember wandering into Uncle Lou’s in-home office and being impressed by his ledger style checkbook that was lying on his desk.  Uncle Lou was a major real estate developer in and around Sacramento and unbeknownst to him, I actually lived in one of his apartments just before I moved from the city in 1964.

Uncle Lou is still with us and will be 92 later this year.  His constant activities in business and play have kept his mind sharp and his body healthy.  He is a member of Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" and I admire him greatly.