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The Brussels Post, 1977-11-23, Page 3SOLVE THEM HERE ! FOR YOUR STEREO FANS..... YAMAHA H.P3 HEADPHONES Clinton Home Hardware 24 Albert St, Clinton Save 20 % Save As Much As On. All CO PIONEER Hi Fi Equipment Now In Stock Pioneer Has Announced A Price Increase Of Up To 20% On All Their Hi Fi Equipment. Effective November, 7th1977 We Will Be Able To Offer Pioneer Equipment At Former Prices Until November 30, 1977 Buy Now And Save! MUSIC 16 Ontario 'Steed, Steidioed Shop $tratfordi City. Centre Most things' that come in litres pour, splash & spill THE BRUSSELS POST, NOVEMBER 23, 1977 -3 Anen by Karl Schuessler Village store with modern touch ai ;te Lea hi he gi igl th ha uc :he :he S i hi us] :at is •ot no led her to Ing ble nd ast Fod lie ile ke Ill' Lto al ly t; of le ie By golly, the price is right when it comes to me of those cooperative food stores. There's thing fancy about them. No bright colors d big posters of yummy food and soft music entice you into buying more. Just plain ills with even plainer rows of tin containers at hold all the food stuffs they're selling. Of course, this, is, a cooperative, and as the rd says, you do cooperate -- in getting your erchandise out of the tins and into bags and t to your car. You have to bring along your vn sacks and containers. You come armed 'th egg cartons' and empty glass jars and tiles. And, if you feel kindly toward your llowman, you'll,leave a few empties on the elf, just in case some newcomer doesn't ow the rules. As you see, packaging is your problem -- t theirs. And so is the bagging and eighing. Did you ever try to buy a half pound sesame seeds and find you dished in two nces too much? So 'back you go from the eigh scales and try again. Heaven only sows what two 'less ounces of sesame seeds ooks like. Oops. You took out too much. It's ack to the sesame tin once again. And a third echeck on the. scale. Now, if I were a great mathematician, I'd ettle for my first try at the weigh scale. Let it o at that. ' But that's another thing with those ooperatives. You have to figure out the price f your package. If one pound of sesame costs 1,79 a - pound, what does eleven ounces cost? For Heaven's sake, don't they know? Math was my poorest subject? And I don't have a pencil on me or a piece of paper to figure all this out. I thought those and of problems only happened in grade 5 nath work books. And since I'm frugile enough to go to a cooperative, I'm sure not going out and buy myself a pocket calculator. One of those gadgets would sure come in handy, though. You not only have to pack, package and price each item, you have to total up your own bill. Type Frequency Response Weight with Cord They're an honest lot, in these cooperatives. They're willing to trust my shaky math as well as my honest face to tell them I've never shopped in there before. That way I get my first shopping spree without a service charge. Ah, there's the rub. A membership fee, and if you're a serious member you help out with the housekeeping chores and the monthly mailings. All of that? For some bulk food? In my own personal containers? With my own fractured math? I sometimes worry with that kind of math rating, I'd wind up cheating myself. Forget about the other guy. So maybe the price isn't right after all. The truth is I'm spoiled. I'm spoiled by racing into the store, picking off the goods here arid there -- all weighed, boxed and priced. And if I'm lucky, and I'm in the right store, they even tell me how much each ounce costs per brand and I'm on my easy way to comparing prices. I'm spoiled by this prepackaged world. My wife keeps reminding me we don't have room enough to store every empty bottle, sack and basket that comes into the house. I have trouble remembering to take along • her grocery list, much less all the containers to put them in. I'm spoiled by the machines that do all the figuring for me. I'm spoiled by the clerks who cash, sack, and say "thank-you". I'm spoiled, and yet not all that spoiled. I'm not that far down the line to think that big is good and a specilization even better. I know a good thing in grocery stores when I see one, And I saw one last week in Brodhagen. It's not the huge supermarket type, but it's the liveliest go-gettem ' family store I've seen in ages. • Brodhagen was never the same without a general store. When it closed down, the village seemed to close down too. It took Andy Buck and his boys a while to find the store, but once they bought it, the village came alive again. Andy might not have a cracker barrel and wood stove to bring the people in and start joshing, but he's got something even better. Good prices, yes. Prizes and draws, yes. Radio spot commercials, yes. Ads in the local newspapers, yes. Truckload sales, yes. Quite a change from the time when the early owners like Querengesser and Diegel drove their team of horses to Dublin to pick up all their grocery supplies the train dropped off at the C.N. station. And if you look hard enough at Buck's General Store on the north side, you can still see the faded names of those two men still painted into the yellow bricks. I'm all for the new life Andy Buck is bringing back to Brodhagen. He's carrying on the village store tradition. And he's adding the modern touch to keep the family store in competition. It's those good independent grocery stores like Bucks, that keep the local people from straying into ' the big cities. And if it's something this countryside needs, it's helping to keep your home town man in business. Oethodyhathatio, 20 . 20000 HZ