Everyone Called Him H.H.

He was a black-haired, skinny Frenchman, with twinkling eyes and a dry humor that seemed to come naturally to him. I used to watch him kid the ladies as he wrapped their pork chops. He owned the corner grocery in our town. He delivered groceries daily to the neighborhood. Orders phoned in in the morning were filled by the clerk and would be delivered each afternoon.

In the backroom of the store stood a black, ugly, pot-bellied stove which on cold days had an inviting fire staining its' massive middle, bright red. Arranged in a loose circle were upended apple and orange crates which provided seats for local folks who always seemed to be hanging around. n H. H. n was often heard back there chanting a little ditty for his cronies that went like this, "how much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

Once I heard him singing to Mrs. Lanza as he wrapped her meat; "When I kissa my pet, tastes just like sphaget, that's eyetalian loove." and all the while rolling his eyes as he hands her the package.

She laughed and said, "H.H. you are incorrigible", as she walked out of the store.

He wandered back to the backroom, sat on a box, and told the fellows a story of his childhood back in 1899 about how he helped his Mother by earning a little money during the time when no one had very much.

 "In those years we didn't have much and I felt rich if I had a dime in my pocket. My Mother kept our little house clean and we had enough to eat but not much more. One morning our neighbor up the road asked me if I wanted to earn 50 cents. Boy! did I ever. He wanted me to take his cows to the packing house in Sioux City. The stockyards were reached by following the railroad tracks about 9 miles from our little town of Sargent Bluffs, Iowa. He Had 14 cows for me to take up there. I herded those cows together early one morning with a stick and we started on our way. It wasn't long before I realised that this was no easy chore. The job entailed more than I ever imagined to just keep them from straying or stopping to eat. The enormity of what I had agreed to became clear as the miles slowly went by. I can tell you I was so worried about those cows, I guess I stopped every few minutes and counted them to be sure they were all there. It was almost night when I reached the stockyards and turned those cows in. That was when I counted them for the last time.

The salesmen used to call on him weekly and one of the salesmen said, "I always tried to call on H.H. last because he would talk and tell stories by the hour and he always had some I hadn't heard before.

H.H. was telling a salesman one morning that his wife insisted that he buy a new suit. He said, "That entails a lot of bother for me. First, I'll have to get a checkup from the Doc as a suit lasts me quite a few years and is a big investment. I'd hate to die before it was worn out.".

The stories are gone, the corner grocery is gone, the supermarket has taken over but there are still a lot of people who remember H.H.~ and his little store.