I no longer was a grown woman sitting on her sofa in Arizona, but a Time Traveler back to the early 1950s, standing in the tiny Canadian hamlet called Lafond, Alberta where I grew up. Locals jokingly call it "L.A.", and it is about as far at the other end of the spectrum from Los Angeles as you can possibly get!

The Lafond Store, as we called it, was about four miles up a dusty, gravel road from our farm. Mrs. Rachelle Lafreniere owned the store, and she lived in the back with her two sons and their growing families. The entire village of Lafond consisted of one intersection—a quaint quadrant with a tiny white church and cemetery on one corner, the store on the other, and the school and a few homes across from them. Something about that little store seemed like the Center of the Universe to a young country girl like me. But long before I set foot on this planet, the heartbeat of the Lafond Store and its mercantile family was beating strongly.

The Mrs. Lafreniere I remember was on the tiny side, with pin-set curls of wavy brown hair just kissing her ears. The softness of her wide-set eyes peered from behind her wire-rimmed glasses and a serene smile graced the space below her chiseled cheekbones. She moved around the store gracefully, an efficient ruler of her tiny kingdom. Her parents had moved from Quebec, Canada in 1914 to homestead in Alberta. She came from a robust family of nine children. In 1927, she married the son of another homesteader and they farmed until buying the country store in 1940. She had three children. One died at birth. Her husband died in 1954, but with the help of her children, she kept the store running. She always asked her customers about their families, and, if money was tight, she granted credit until farmers sold their next load of grain or hauled livestock into town for cash. She was no stranger to hard times, and she knew how to help people.

On Christmas Eve, 1952 my Mom’s mother and brother suffered carbon monoxide poisoning when somehow the chimney in their tiny shack got blocked. Her mother died in the hospital during the night, and her brother barely survived. My sister recalls the evening. "It was Christmas Eve, and Mom was getting ready for midnight mass. She looked so pretty in her favorite black, taffeta dress and pumps. She was singing and dancing around the kitchen, getting ready to throw on her heavy, wool coat and put her fur boots over her pumps. There was a knock at the door, and it was Mrs. Lafreniere’s son, Raymond, there to give us the bad news about Baba." On a frigid, winter night they drove Mom to the hospital, where she watched her beloved mother slip away at 2:30 a.m. What a burden it must have been for these owners of the area’s solitary telephone to drive around the countryside, bearing bad news to farmers. I hope they got to deliver some GOOD news once in a while!

Death rapped on Mom’s door again in 1953. Mrs. L and other farm neighbors were there when my mother’s first husband died of cancer. They sat vigil in the small, homestead house until Solomon stiffened and died in my Mom’s arms. It was Mrs. L who drove Sol to the hospital during his long two-year illness, and it was Mrs. L who purchased a white shirt and a suit for him be buried in. After Sol’s death, she was kind enough to offer credit to a struggling widow with four children until Mom’s small widow’s pension check arrived every month.

Her "errand of mercy" patience was tested, however, when my sister and brother, along with two friends, committed quite a questionable faux pas. It was the dead of winter with subfreezing temperatures. Surely the Devil made them do it, but all four kids kneeled down and put their tongues on a metal pipe that ran from the kerosene tank to the store. Naturally, all four young tongues froze instantly to the metal. True to her brand of kindness, Mrs. L came out with a kettle of warm water and thawed the mischievous tongues from their iron prison. The things kids do!

My Mom eventually remarried, and that man became my Dad. Soon I was the fifth child to be paraded through the store’s front doors to join the chorus of, "Mamma, can I have…???" I can rewind the scene in my mind so easily--a sepia-toned movie clip running in that era’s slower motion…

When the dust kicked up by the balding white-wall tires of our 53 Chevy finally settled, we could see farmers filling up their rickety old cars, trucks and tractors from the two hand-pumped fuel pumps out front. (Decades later, when it came time to modernize, it was a GRAND event when they dug a hole in the ground for underground tanks with electronic pumps!)

This store, where Mrs. L was the presiding angel, was an adventure for us kids. With a screeeee!!! of the long coiled spring and a thwack!!! of the old white screen door hitting the frame, we entered the heart of our community. Inside, visions and smells of all things GOOD greeted us. The first smell to hit our noses was the linseed oil soaking the wide planks on the floor. Their wood grain had worn unevenly in the traffic areas and also by the cellar hatch door that led to the basement storage. A comforting aroma soup of linseed oil, paint, peppermint candy and flour sacks permeated the air. On the right was the hewn, wooden counter covered with food and sundries. A back wall of shelves held the canned goods, pharmacy items and cigarettes. An old cash register recorded the daily purchases of farmers whose risky livelihoods depended on whether Mother Nature would allow their crops to grow and be harvested. On the left was a well-worn bench where locals sat to enjoy a Coke or Orange Crush and chat a while. Behind it was another large counter displaying household goods and a few gift possibilities for those shoppers who didn’t have time to make the big run into the nearest large town.

A red Coke machine flanked the doorway, holding its precious inventory of sensuously curved glass bottles of cold, brown nirvana. In those days, soft drinks were a rare treat, and ingredients hadn’t been tampered with by the FDA. When we popped off the ridged metal caps using the old, cast metal opener affixed to the machine, that bubbly shssshing and fizzing sound promised excitement, tantalized taste buds and healthy burps. Further into the store a rectangular chest freezer held even more delectable treats—huge vats of ice cream just waiting to be dipped and spooned onto pointed sugar cones. We kids often were treated to a cone on Sunday, after church services were over. Back then, the firmly observed Sabbath Day was special, and farmers traded their dusty overalls for their Sunday-best suits and felt hats. Women wore flowery, cotton dresses with voluminous skirts, simple hats, gloves and sensible pumps. The chatty families slowly dispersed from the church steps and wandered to the store for a few groceries or treats and a healthy dose of gossip.

Across from the ice cream chest were the meat coolers, with their inventory of whole bolognas, sausages and rounds of cheese. A huge gleaming stainless steel meat slicer sat behind it. I was fascinated by the rhythm of that slicer as it carved its way back and forth through the fresh cold cuts and cheeses. On the old-fashioned scale, Mrs. L measured the goods carefully and wrapped them securely in brown, butcher paper. She smiled as she handed them across the counter and my young taste buds anticipated the fresh bologna sandwich on Mom’s homemade bread, covered in fresh farm butter and French’s mustard.

I still remember my Mom lifting me up and plunking me down on the counter while she paid for her purchases. That counter, with its edge worn smooth from years of friendly leaning, had seen many thick coats of oil paint. Mrs. L had the kindest face I had ever seen and she was known to reach into her huge glass candy jar to hand me a bubble gum or hard candy as I waited.

My wide, young eyes eagerly took in the displays of Cracker Jack popcorn and Circus popcorn. The latter was dyed a bright pink—surely with a red dye that would be banned as a cancer-causing ingredient these days. Both boxes promised fabulous prizes, like fake-gem rings, whistles, and small toys. Sinking low into the back seat of the our old car, I entertained myself with these gadgets all the way back home.

At the very back of the store was the Mission Control Headquarters for our little village. By this time most farmers had telephones, but they were on the party-line system where everyone could listen in to your business. The old, black, rotary dial phone on our wall rang a certain code for each party. If we needed to make a long distance call, Mrs. L was the efficient switchboard operator who connected us, plugging the spider leg array of black wires into mysterious holes. She also served as our postmaster, and it was always exciting for me to peer over the half door that separated the post office/telephone room from the rest of the store. A wall of small wooden mail slots held more mail than bills in those days. People didn’t have credit cards and mortgages and junk mail. There were only TWO catalogs: Sears and Eaton's, and both did triple duty as reading material, paper doll cut outs and toilet paper! Aunts and uncles and far-away friends wrote cherished letters in beautifully scripted handwriting. They were my window to a much larger world, and I would have Mom read them to me over and over. I especially loved the frail looking onion-skin-thin air mail envelopes, rimmed in red and blue and decorated with exotic stamps that arrived all the way from Japan. Inside were fragile pages that had been pounded by old typewriter keys. Those neat rows of type told of the amazing life lived by my Aunt Germaine Lamoureux as she spent her years as a Roman Catholic nun, missionary and teacher in Japan. I would turn our old world globe to view the other side of our planet and marvel at how her letters could reach from there to here!

Mrs. L’s two sons learned the value of hard work and dedication all the years they helped to run the store. They followed the lead of their industrious father, who had bought a three-ton truck in 1945 and hauled everything from grain, livestock and farm cream to precious coal for warming people’s homes during those LONG Canadian winters. The sons eventually took to the wheel with their own trucking and school bus driving businesses.

As the years rolled on and I grew from a little girl in ringlets to a scrawny preteen, the country store remained a comforting constant in my life. When I turned twelve years old, my Dad brought home my first two-wheel bicycle. My best friend, Lillian, had diligently saved for her own bike, and we rejoiced on the day that we got off the school bus to see that rear tire and shiny fender peeking around the corner of her house. Entire new vistas opened up for us! We exhausted our pent-up energy on the long ride to the store, allowance money jingling in our jean pockets. Leaning our precious new wheels up against the iron bike rack out front, we thirstily plunked our coins into that old, red Coke machine and wet our whistles while trying to decide on an Oh Henry, Eatmore or Coffee Crisp candy bar. My Dad will kill me when he reads this, but I have to complete this virtual memory album with the confession that we sometimes bought cigarettes to smoke on the way home. Mrs. L would peer at us over that long counter and ask, "Are you SURE these are for your parents?" While we smoked, coughed, and choked on our prized filtered Rothman's, we laughed off the guilt and hoped we wouldn’t burn in Hell for lying. Lillian sent me an e-mail recently, sharing her amazingly sharp recall of our Lafond shopping excursions:  "When the cigarettes were 50 cents it was no problem, but then they went up to 55 cents and that was a little more difficult to divide in half. Who would pay the extra cent?  I think we decided that whoever paid the extra cent would get the side with 13 cigs, the other would get the 12 side." 

Sadly, the Lafond Store stands no longer. It closed in 1990, and its sagging, old frame was bulldozed down about six years ago. Mrs. L is 94 years old and living in a nursing home. Her sharp memory that kept score of almost fifty years of transactions has dimmed, but she has left a wonderful legacy of service and friendship to a small, close-knit community. The last time I drove through that intersection, there was an ache in my heart when I saw the empty gap left behind where our cozy store used to stand. A very important part of my childhood Universe was erased. I longed to hear the sound of that old screen door screeching open one more time.

Swallowing the last sip of my now-cold coffee, I went to straighten the messy pile of newspapers and dropped them into the recycle basket. Something made me stop and retrieve the coupon flyer with the painting of the old country store. I clipped it out and brought it upstairs for my scrap booking pile. "Some day, I might want to write about country stores," I thought. About a month ago I recalled a fragment of a brief and simple dream in which Mrs. L appeared. She had silvery white hair framing that still-kind face, and she just sort of stopped by to say hello. I had no reason whatsoever to dream about her, but she’s been in my thoughts a lot lately. Somehow, in her aging dreamtime reverie she plugged in one of those old, black switchboard wires and connected with me over the miles. She’s probably the one who made me retrieve that picture out of the bin. This column is my way of saying, "Hello, Mrs. L. Thanks for the bubble gum, thanks for your goodness and most of all, thanks for the precious memories. And I’m sorry for lying about the cigarettes."