Remember when: Rolling stores and peep, peep, peeps

By Guest Columnist Mary Jane Boutwell

I went out to the chicken pen to get the day’s eggs in the middle of the afternoon. This is a daily chore to keep the hens from eating their eggs. This reminded me of Uncle Fred Watford and rolling stores.

Do you know what a rolling store was back in the 1900s? The ones I remember were a squared metal structure on the back of a quarter-ton truck. They were similar to today’s Fed Ex trucks in appearance. There were wooden shelves all the way around the U-shaped interior. Memory says the shelves were slanted towards the center aisle, with a board across the front to hold the items on the shelf and a thin narrow board at the back that created a small space between it and the outside wall.

This was during the time that everyone did not have a motor vehicle. Maybe they had a horse or a mule-drawn wagon—but no quick run to the store. Folks were pretty much tied down to manually working the farm and garden for a living and to put food on the table.

The rolling stores carried some canned food and basic foods—salt, sugar, flour, cornmeal, cheese, bologna, eggs, candy, and others, if asked for.

You name it, and it was in the store - or was there next week. No refrigeration!

In the late 1970s, I was talking to a gentleman. He said when he was working in the field and the rolling store horn blew, he dropped everything and ran. The weekly rolling store visit was a big event, and he spent what little he had on goodies. Back then, you could buy several kinds of candy for one cent each.

Both my parents and Uncle Fred had rolling stores.

When my family lived at Camden, there was a shed where they kept supplies for the store. Wayman, a brother, told of sneaking a five-pound bag of raisins and eating all of them. He never ate raisins again.

When the bologna was sold down to the heel, the boys, Larry and Wayman, were allowed to eat it. Both of them told of cutting the bologna, throwing the slices out of the moving truck so they could have heel.

Now, why did tending to my chickens bring to mind rolling stores and Uncle Fred? Well, back when Leon and I hosted our yearly Fourth of July fish fry, Uncle Fred ate and then told stories.

His store sold homegrown eggs. 

One summer day, as he was selling out of the rolling store, he kept hearing “peep, peep, peep.” Finally, he looked around at the shelving. Where the eggs were on the shelf, there were only eggs. But behind the thin wooden strip at the back of the eggs, he found several newly hatched biddies. His thought was the inside stayed warm, as it was summer and stayed closed up.

The movement of the rolling store on the dirt and gravel roads kept the eggs rotated. Hence, several biddies!

A customer heard the “peep, peep, peeps” and bought the biddies.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mary Jane Boutwell is a passionate historian and is thrilled to share stories about way back when.