The grocery store operators could, during the summer months, get their wagons pretty close to their customers. But during the fall and winter, when it was wet and muddy, the problems of delivering groceries, feed and fuel, to their top customers, became nearly imposible.
Most people were wise to order their loads of wood during the dry months when they could be assured of delivery. The wood was piled up for summer seasoning, since it was delivered green.
The grocery delivering was an entirely different matter, since people during this period could generaly not afford to buy in quantity. Neither did they have facilities for keeping and preserving food like we have today. As a result, groceries were ordered for a week's use at a time.
The following grocery and meat stores making deliveries in our area were: The Boston, East End, Hapners, Wisconsin, Anderson & Lind, and the Eastern and Star meat shops. When winter came, those stores were forced to leave their wagons at the corner of Harris Avenue and 24th Street. They would then carry the groceries and feed on their backs to as far as the foot of Sehome Hill for customers living there. The grocers and checkers in the modern markets do not know what it was like for the old time delivery boys.
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Hunsby, George. The Birth, Death, and Ressurrection of Fairhaven.
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