52 Ancestors in 2022 - Week 14: Check It Out

 It's Week 14 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The prompt for the week is ‘Check It Out’. This was a hard one for me. I thought about sharing a resource I recently discovered, but that didn’t motivate me. Then I thought…'checker'. Many people in my tree worked in retail, and often as the person who ‘checked you out’. My mother spent many years in retail. My brother is in retail now. My sisters both worked in retail as young women. And even I worked in retail for a short while. I was a sales clerk for J.C. Penney.

This week I am going to write about one store—the store owned by my Dad’s cousin, Henry Hahnenkamp. My dad always called him Junior. Henry’s father was a brother to my Dad’s mother and came from a family of dairymen. His grandfather and father were dairy farmers. Henry learned the dairy business growing up. Then he used that knowledge to open a dairy store. 

photo from Goodreads

 When I was quite young, the store was known as Quality Dairy, but at some point the name was changed to East Alton Dairy. My family just called the store ‘Henry’s’. Many of Henry’s relatives worked at the store at one time or another. That included both my mother and one of my sisters. Some of my favorite memories come from the time my mother worked at the store. I’m going to share a few random memories today.

My mother worked at the store when I was very young, leaving when my baby brother was born. I was 10 years old when she left. The dairy started at as a very small store, selling a variety of dairy products. The store later expanded and began selling a larger variety of groceries. The main thing I remember the store selling was ice cream—both soft-serve and scoops of many flavors. I remember asking for ‘dip’ cones. These were soft-serve cones dipped in chocolate. The chocolate hardened when it touched the cold ice cream.

My family only had one car at the time, so my Dad would drive my mom down to work, and pick her up at the end of her evening shift. And of course we kids would ride along. And as often as not, we got ice cream! The biggest ice cream cone I ever had came from Henry’s. It was so tall—at least to my little kid eyes! I'm sure that my mom made the cone. She had a trick of swirling the ice cream at the top of the cone instead of ‘in’ the cone, so it always looked like more than it was. My mom told stories of Henry giving her ‘a talking to’ because she was putting too much ice cream in the cone. She was say it was the right amount. He would weigh it, only to find out that it was the right amount of ice cream.

Henry was always had a smile on his face. He was very generous to us kids, slipping us a piece of candy or extra ice cream when we came into the store. He also took us to the back room to let us look through the ‘magic window’. The window looked like a mirror from the outside, but from inside, we could look out and see all the people.

One particularly special memory for me is a night when we drove down to pick my mom up after work. My dad drove the car around to the back of the store to wait until closing. It was a warm summer night. There was a meteor shower that night. The night was dark because there weren’t a light of lights around. The sky was clear. Dad pulled a blanket out and laid it on the roof of the car. Then he set me up there to lay down on the blanket and stare at the sky. There were so many meteors that night! It was amazing! I’ve never seen such a spectacular meteor shower since, and that has been over 50 years ago!

Another not-so-pleasant memory is from an evening when we dropped my mom off at work. My little sister was sitting in the front seat. Back before child car seats were common, kids used to argue over who got to ride in front, and this evening it was her turn. We had an old Dodge. The locks were the door handles. Pushing forward locked the door, and pulling back unlatched the door so you could open it. You see where this is going, right? As my Dad rounded the corner, my sister locked the door…she thought. But she was 5, and she mistakenly pulled up instead of pushing down. As my dad made the turn, the door flew open, and my little sister fell out! (Seat belts weren't yet common.) My other sister and I were in the back seat yelling “Dad! Cindy fell out of the car! Dad! Cindy fell out of the car!” It took a minute for him to register what was happening. He was concentrating on traffic, trying to pull out onto the busy road. Luckily he was still in the parking lot and not going very fast. And even luckier, my sister hung onto the door handle for dear life! She was 'only' dragged along the pavement, and not run over by the car! Her legs were terribly skinned up, but she was okay. My Dad was more shook up than any of us, because he realized how bad it could have been. I don’t think we little kids realized at the time that she could have been run over and killed!

I have other memories of the dairy, but they will have to wait for another post. If you'd like to learn more about Henry and his store, you can pick up a copy of Our Father's Business on Amazon. It is written by Henry's daughter, Jeannette Hahnenkamp Gentry. In addition to family history, there are bits of history about the dairy business and some great photos that give context to the era.