Long, Long Ago

In another time and place

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My sister Kathy has always been the official keeper of old family photos. She’s got countless old-school padded albums full of them and there’s a certain something about physically flipping those thick pages that can’t be matched by the electronic files of today. By today’s standards, the quality of many photos are poor, by my standards they are superior.

We’ve been going through these albums lately. It’s been a good trip down memory lane for us. She showed me something yesterday I had totally forgotten about. An old, slightly yellowed, newspaper article. I took it out of the album and clicked a picture of it for this post but it doesn’t really relay the feeling I had holding it.

I stared at the young guy with the apron on for a moment and then there was a rush of memory, of a lost time, a lost moment. Long over and gone, but remembered now. The article is almost 50 years old.

Before I went into Food Sales and Marketing, I spent long years in the stores starting as a sacker at 16 years old and on through to being a store manager at 25. Hard years, with no degree but a lot of desire. The youngest manager in the small chain of thirty stores. All that said, I still had a whole lot to learn.

I remember that the elderly lady had tears running down her cheeks and the emotion was heartfelt. It was real. It was warm. It was wholesome goodness. I learned something new about the business…and about life, that day.

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