Greenfield, in its heyday — the 1940s — offered a variety of places for us to spend our small allowances and where our parents could find a myriad of necessary items, as well. We had Kresge’s, Woolworths and McLellan’s — fondly referred to as “the dime store,” “the Five and Ten” and probably other nicknames I’ve forgotten.
McLellan’s, perhaps the largest of the three, was housed on Main Street in what is now the Mattress store. If you look up and to your right as you enter Greenfield’s Market through the rear entrance, you see faintly, the red and gold lettering — McLellan’s.
This is the store where we young high school girls would buy a new lipstick, in a cardboard tube, because it was wartime and metal was needed for other purposes. We might also buy a pretty necklace or bracelet made of plastic — that new material, also replaced needed metals.
The younger children were drawn to the delights of the toy department. Coloring books, crayons, paper dolls were there, as were toy guns of varying styles. The guns however were only snap guns, clicking as the trigger was pulled because all the powder for cap guns had gone to help real guns at war. There were rubber balls that very quickly lost their bounce because rubber was needed for the war effort, but the game of Jacks and the bags of multi-colored marbles remained.
Children are a resilient lot, and we all managed to get along perfectly well with whatever we had. The magic machine that popped out perfect mini doughnuts was still operative, so life was good at McLellan’s.
This store also had a large candy department — glass cases all along one wall. Always tempting, what to choose today? But, this was wartime, sugar was rationed and candy was in short supply. However, one wonderful day, the word went out that McLellan’s had chocolate. Quick, get over to the candy case and stand in line! Even the scent is thrilling! The look of it, in the case, seemed a bit odd. It was in chunks, rather than neatly made into squares of fudge or candy bars, but it was chocolate! The lady behind the counter patiently weighed out these precious chunks, and placed them in the familiar small white paper bags. “That’ll be 25 cents, and only one to a customer. No cheating!”
My sister and I each paid our 25 cents and said, “imagine it — chocolate today at McLellan’s!” The ride home was spent peeking into our little bags to make sure we really had this, and whispering of how we’d share with Mom and Dad after supper that night.