The Adventures of Nellie and Doris: The One At Candy's Kwik Shop

Across the street from my house in SE Portland there was a small market.  Well, it looked small but when you entered it was like Dr. Who's tardis phonebooth. It went on forever.

Anything you needed was in that store. Need a ham for Thanksgiving dinner? Yep, got that.  Need the coldest beer and freshest popcorn in town? Yep, got that. Need eggs, cigarettes, milk, pancake syrup? Oh yeah. Video games and fresh donuts, along with freshly brewed coffee. We even had an ATM machine, hot dogs on a spit, freshly baked cookies. And candy...lots and lots of candy.

The store became a Minit Mart about a year after I moved into the neighborhood. None of us were happy that some corporate store was moving into the space.  After all, it used to be a real market with fresh butchered meat from a meat counter. That was before my time, but yeah it used to be real. And along comes a Minit Mart. The previous owner came over to my house, sat on the front step, and told me about the sale. He apologized but said it was time to move on. But hey! That new Minit Mart turned out to be owned by the greatest couple in the world: Bill and Candy Field.

I got to know the owners quickly. I was working for Portland Public Schools as a Special Education Aide. My first year at college, I continued working for PPS but then summer came along; I was out of work. I had been hanging around the owners of the store in the daytime and the night clerks later on, so the owners gave me a job. I started working nights--3:00-closing. It was the best place to be! I was able to learn all the neighborhood gossip, meet all the kids up and down the area, and could have my kids sleep in their own beds at night.  After all, I was right across the street.

My kids were taken care of by Nellie on the weekends and after school. She would then help them brush their teeth and go to bed at night at our house.  It worked out pretty good.  As school started, they became latchkey kids.  They would come home, come over to see me at the store, and then go over Nellie's for dinner and homework. While they would visit me at least once a day, they were not allowed to hang out at the store while I worked.  As they got older, they would come over and grab something like Reeser's 49cent burrito or a hot dog for an afternoon snack.

After a while, Bill and Candy needed a weekend morning clerk. Nellie asked for the job.  Now the truth was that Candy was unsure of Nellie as a clerk. She thought Nellie was too soft and didn't have the gumption to toss out someone who needed to be tossed out. That was the surprise of Candy's life...Nellie came from strong gumptions.  That woman tossed out more shoplifters than any other clerk, including Bill. She was used to spotting the "untrusted" out there because some of her husband's family were...hmmm...how does one say this...cheaters. Shoplifters. Free-hand shoppers. She could spot one anywhere.

So there the weekends were: Nellie opened the store and I closed it. We were taught to walk around the store and face the products on the shelves when the store was slow. We were so used to doing this that we would go into any store and start facing their cans and goods as we shopped. 

Some years down the line, Bill and Candy bought out Minit Mart and turned the little store into Candy's Kwik Shop. While they had some losers working for them here and there--the one who quit a morning gig by leaving a note on my door...I had to get up and dress, open the store until Bill or Candy could get there.  Or the one who had "hurt his foot" and had so much bandages and gauze around it that it looked like a basketball.  I sent him home and worked. He never came back. Or the woman who worked maybe one weekend and quit to work at a 7-11 across town. No notice; just quit--while they had a few losers, the majority of the workers were loyal and great.  My younger son started there as a bottle boy and began on the till after he turned 18. My friend Stewart started working weekends to my nights before Nellie came on. At one point every neighbor kid worked there, either as a bottle boy, stacking the coolers, or sweeping the lot.

And who was in charge of the neighborhood on all those weekends? Yeah. Nellie and me.

and the beat goes on
peace~~~

 

Nellie and Doris Adventures: Mutt and Jeff

 

My family moved to Portland in February, 1976 and settled into a small two-bedroom house in lower SE. It had a nice-sized front yard and an open lot connected to it. It was a few days after moving in before we could get any heat turned on. There was a small market across the street--Minit Mart--and as I introduced myself, I mentioned our lack of heat to the owners during this February freeze.  The owner of the store rushed home and brought me an electric heater to use until our gas was turned on. Hmmm...so this was the type of neighborhood in which we moved, a neighborhood that cared about and helped one another.

That first spring, I happily started a little garden while the boys were napping. I grew radishes, lettuce, and something else that was easy to grow. I was NOT a gardener; know that right up front. Gardening got me outside in hopes I could meet some of my neighbors.

Now that the weather was nicer, I noticed that there were a bunch of kids about my boys' ages.  Next door from the empty lot were three boys: Steve, Richard, and Tommy. Across the street one house had three kids: Teresa, Arty, and Troy. And next door to this house had three kids: Stephanie, Missy, and Robbie. I had never lived in a neighborhood with lots of kids, not even growing up. This was great!

I decided we needed a little How Do You Do potluck in the neighborhood, so I invited the families over for a neighborhood party. I met and had great friendships with Shirley and Nellie until the day they died. This potluck event turned into something we all did together for many many years. 

As a neighborhood, we had many adventures--store hold ups, neighborhood rival family fights in the store parking lot, cars crashing into the small apartment kitty-corner from my house. The list goes on. But these stories of adventures are with my wonderful beautiful best friend Nellie. We went everywhere together. I might suggest we do something and Nellie would agree. Or she had an idea and I'd jump into the game. And we'd pack up the kids and off we'd go. For example, in the ultra hot of summer, we would decide to walk up to Mt Scott Park for a swim. Great idea! The kids and we could get out of our cranky moods and get cool. Of course! Great Idea! After all, it was only 1.5 miles! The problem was the 1.5 mile walk home.  And there we were, once again hot and cranky.

I knew that Nellie was shorter than me, but then most people in my life were. Since I hit six foot tall in high school, I just stopped paying attention to heights

between people. Yeah, the downside was it did stop me from dating way back then because most the boys hadn't reached their full height yet, but I actually liked being tall. I will admit that one of the problems with being a 6 foot young woman in 1968 was that store-bought dresses were just not long enough to satisfy the "no more than two inches above the knee" dress code we had in high school. Plus these legs were long and I got sent home many times to change my clothes (as a side note, I didn't go home but drove to the beach for the day instead.  Hey! They sent me home!). By the time I was in my 20s, I wore what I wanted and I loved to wear platform shoes. 

As I said, I stopped paying attention to differences in heights...that is until one day we were walking around in the neighborhood and the sun was behind us. And there that height difference jumped in our faces. Nellie came almost to my shoulder.  That was when I started calling us Mutt and Jeff.

With all my heart I wish I could still walk the streets (hey! those quarters add up!) with my beautiful friend Nellie Barney.

and the beat goes on
peace