Another Main Street memory lost
BIBLE HILL - Hands up if your first real job was working at a grocery store.
For people of a certain age – yours truly included – that was often the case. Whether it was working the tills at the checkout lines or, for me, bagging groceries and carting them out, maybe carrying if it was only one or two (of course, strictly paper bags back then … and, oddly enough, we’re back to those brown paper bags now). Then, of course, carefully placing in the customer’s vehicle.
The whole idea seems quaint now.
I would do the odd stocking the shelves duty if it wasn’t particularly busy at the registers, but it was rarely slow at the front of Cavanaugh’s Food Market on Main Street in Bible Hill when I first landed my job in the early 1980s – especially during the weekend hours I was usually scheduled.
I don’t recall ever officially applying. I think it was more a case of dad mentioning to owner Lloyd Cavanaugh or his son Benny Cavanaugh who managed, that he had a son old enough to work and then suggested I go see about getting on.
Testing my memory, I think it was Benny I chatted with before landing my job which was mostly Friday or Saturday evening shifts, or Saturday dayshifts. There would be the odd weekday evening shift thrown in there, especially in the summer where I would grab whatever became available if it didn’t conflict with ball.
It was sports that led to my eventually giving up my job at Cavanaugh’s, although, as I think back, they probably would have accommodated me given how supportive they were as a business, and as people, of all things recreation and their staff.
I was trying out for the Truro Jr B Bearcats in the fall of 1983 and when it was getting down to the last couple of cuts, coach Jim Cumming had me playing in one exhibition game and another bubble player playing in the other. The game coach Cumming had me playing in conflicted with my Cavanaugh’s schedule so I asked Jim if we could reverse it and that if I did make the team, he wouldn’t have to worry about any work conflicts because I would give up my part-time job.
Along with the running bill my parents and many others had at the store – basically, just dates and totals written down and stored near the cash registers (which I added to a ‘few’ times) - the standout memory of working at Cavanaugh’s was the friendliness of the place. Starting with Lloyd and his wife Jean, who often worked a cash register and were so good to all the staff and customers, it ran throughout the store. I wasn’t there long but I can’t really remember a bad day. I’m sure there was the odd rude or impatient customer, but the pleasantness of the place and people stands out and it was for that reason – even though it closed as an operation roughly a dozen years ago – it was sad to see the building being torn to the ground last week.
Damaged by Hurricane Fiona – was anything not damaged by Hurricane Fiona? – the building, which housed the Co-op Country Store at the time, was deemed structurally unsound and needed to come down. Along with its former neighbour across the street – the Pond – not seeing those buildings as you make your in or out of Bible Hill via Main Street and the Salmon River Bridge just doesn’t seem right … it will never seem right for some of us.