friendly neighbors....

 I promise that this will be the last reference to 'the casserole.'  While grocery shopping for all the necessary ingredients, I was reminded of a grocery shopping experience that I remember quite fondly.  

The year was 1978, my first husband had just accepted a position with NCR in Columbus, Ohio and we had purchased a nice house in the country on three acres of land about five miles from the town of New Concord.  We soon discovered that New Concord was the birthplace of astronaut John Glen.  Going to school in that school system quickly sparked my son's interest in all things space.  He has worked in space related jobs for his entire career, but that's a story for a different time.  

Very soon after we moved in, I went to the nearest grocery store (it was in New Concord) to stock up on many, many necessary groceries.  If you've ever moved, you know what I mean.  I pushed my cart into one of the checkout lanes, watched as the contents of my overflowing cart, including ice cream, were rung up and bagged.  This was long before the era of self check-out, and also before the common use of credit cards to buy groceries.  When the total was announced, I confidently whipped out my check book and pen, ready to write a check, and discovered, to my intense embarrassment, that I had used the last check and forgotten to put a new pad of checks in the checkbook.  To those of you who are much younger than me, this won't make any sense at all, but I'm guessing that a few of you remember writing checks for store purchases.  

The clerk called for the manager, and I told him, as I had told the clerk, that if they would just hold the groceries for me, I would go home (about a ten minute drive) and come back with a check to pay for my groceries.  I was obviously flustered until the manager said "Oh, you're the family who just moved into the "Smith's" house, aren't you?  Don't worry, take your groceries home, put them away, then you can come back and pay us."  I did exactly what he said, came back after the ice cream and everything else was put away and paid my bill.

I promise you I never shopped anywhere else for groceries for the entire four years we lived there.  We soon discovered that this man was the rule, not the exception.  New Concord was the friendliest community I have ever lived in.