Notebook Credit

With all the current talk of a deep recession and the trouble with banks and the credit markets, I was thinking about life during the depression era and our early involvement with credit.

When I was a kid, my neighborhood in Buffalo did not have the big supermarkets that we have today. Grocery stores were mostly family owned, store-front shops. Usually, the family lived in the back of the store. Since all fruits and vegetables were seasonal, that is, not shipped in from afar like Chile, Mexico, or even California, grocery stores carried mostly canned goods, for example, green beans or corn which we now can buy fresh at anytime of the year.. Seasonal fresh produce was purchased at the farmers’ market. Groceries only carried white bread but fresh baked crusty bread could be purchased at the local bakery. Groceries might carry cold cuts, but meat was bought at the neighborhood butcher chop. (Side story: White bread and a variety of baked goods could be purchased from a horse-drawn bakery wagon that regularly made the neighborhood rounds. My mother rarely bought anything from this bakery wagon because she was a prolific baker of pies, cakes, and sometimes bread.)

The grocery store in my neighborhood was called the “red and white;” the outside was painted bright red with white sign lettering. I think that it was a franchise operation, but family run. The proprietor kept a small dog-eared notebook next to the cash register. When someone bought groceries, he would jot down the amount in the notebook on a page dedicated to the customer. All this was in pencil. On Friday, when most people got their pay, they would come to the store and make good on the week’s credit. Notice, I said pay, not paycheck, because most people received their wages in cash in an envelope. Certainly, through the 1930s and ‘40s this was a cash society except for the credit that was offered by individual shop owners like the grocery in my neighborhood. In our family, we never utilized this form of credit. The family motto was, if you can’t afford it (in cash) , you don’t buy it. An exception that proves the rule: my mother made use of “lay away plans” offered by the department stores for the purchase of expensive items such as a winter coat. She would make periodic cash payments until the item was paid in full and only then could it be taken home.

I recall many a time when I overheard the proprietor questioning the little kid (like myself) about when his or her mommy or daddy would be coming in to pay up the account. I never saw a case when the kid didn’t take home the item he or she was sent to buy.

(Another image: One of the fun things about going to the grocery store was to watch the proprietor use his “remote package gripper” to reach for cans or boxes on the highest shelves of the store. (The shelves went from floor to ceiling.) Even better, was to watch him, if he were in a playful or, perhaps, boastful mood to nudge the can forward to topple it off the shelf and catch it as it fell into his other hand. Even more fun was to use the gripper yourself when he was busy attending other customers.)

I think our first venture into credit cards was with gasoline company issued cards. I recall that we had a Gulf Oil card and a Texaco card; there might also have been others. It is to be noted, however, that these cards were used only for gasoline purchases; they could not be used more generally as we now use a VISA card. It was through Rohm and Haas, for which I did a fair amount of traveling in the ‘60s, that I was issued an American Express card that could also be used for personal expenses. However, we used it only during vacations for lodging, meals, and the like; the Amex card was never used for general merchandise purchases. In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, we also had a Sears Roebuck card and a card issued by one or two of the big department stores in Huntsville and then, later, in Jenkintown. But again, these were used only for in-store purchases.

I wonder if history will agree with my impression that the beginnings of the credit card society began with the oil industry.