PEA RIDGE — All through the years, as we have shopped at the stores, the salesperson waiting on us might ask, “Would you like a bag for that?” or “Would you like me to wrap that for you?” In the old days, the bag was usually a brown paper bag.

A “wrap” would usually be a heavy white paper that came on a big roll, and the salesperson would tear off however much was needed to wrap our items. As selfservice stores became common, more things came to be pre-wrapped, usually in brown paper boxes or heavy white paper boxes.

Still later, plastic wrap became the normal wrap for almost everything.

Sometimes I wish we had never heard of plastic, at least the sort of plastic that everything seems to be wrapped in these days.

Salespeople still occasionally ask, “Would you like that in a bag?” and I wish it happened even more often.

I just say, “No, thank you.”

Many times I go to the hardware store to buy nails or screws or nuts and bolts. Early on, I was accustomed to buying nails by the pound. We would ask the proprietor for “a halfpound of your 10 penny nails.” The hardware store would have nails in bulk in bins, and the proprietor would scoop out quantities to be weighed. If wewanted lots of nails, they were available by the keg. A nail keg was a little barrel, made of wood slats with metal bands. Usually a nail keg was too crude to hold water, but it was fine for nails, and could be used later on for holding any number of miscellaneous items. I haven’t seen a nail keg for sale in a store in years and years. Our Pea Ridge Museum does have one nail keg which came from the Luther Martin Store in the late 1940s. Luther had the store building on the southwest corner of the old downtown intersection. That store building later became the hub of the Easley Hardware.

I’m wondering if anyone ever has a problem ripping open a candy bar? I think of myself as having strong hands and fingers.

But I have had some candy wrappers that almost beat me. One is tempted to get the scissors or a sharp knife just to get the wrapper off a Snicker bar. We didn’t used to have that challenge when it came to eating a candy bar. The wrapper was a paper wrapper. It dida fine job of taking care of the candy, and was easy to open. I vote thumbs down on plastic candy wrappers.

Paper was better. Actually, back in the 1940s, much of the candy we bought, especially the hard candy or jelly bean type candy, came in bulk. You told the proprietor how much candy you wanted, he took your money, scooped your candy into a brown paper sack, rolled down the top and said, “Thank you; come back and see me!” And we said, “OK, we sure will!” Now that was the way to buy candy!

This morning I was opening a new box of Cheerios and a new box of Raisin Bran for breakfast.

Every time I do that, I want to repeat my candy wrapper story above. Getting the inner cereal bag open is much like trying to tear open the plastic wrapper of a Snicker bar. The plastic puts up a fierce defense.

How much better it was when cereal bags were made of wax paper. They were so much easier to open, and neater to use.

Much of the time, these plastic cereal bags rip and fray. I’m also bothered by how much plastic stuff we throw away. It wouldn’t seem so bad if our bags were paper, which would soon deteriorate in the land fill, but plastic doesn’tbreak down. It just lays there for years. I have this vision that in some future years, archeologists who are studying the history of our times may dig through our landfills. They will be able to write scholarly treatises about the weird stuff that we “threw away” but preserved in monster piles.

Many things used to be packaged for sale in buckets. We bought lard and Karo Syrup in gallon buckets. The syrup buckets were metal, with nice bails and with a nice-fitting top which could be tapped back in place to reseal the bucket. They were handy containers. We didn’t throw them away. A gallon syrup bucket made a fine holder for staples when we were fixing fences, or we might use a syrup bucket for a lunch pail when we were eating in the field, or we might carry our tools in a syrup bucket. I remember using a syrup bucket to milk Old Red, our gentlest cow, when I was first learning to milk cows by hand.

◊◊◊

Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 04/07/2010