When I was a kid growing up during the Great Depression, one of my father’s favorite sayings from his World War I Navy days was, “Go easy on the butter, boys, it’s 60 cents a pound!” And we would laugh. Because we knew butter could never be that expensive.

Then later, in the days when a pound of butter sold for 40 cents (it was creeping up) and a five pound sack of flour for a quarter, there was a great hullabaloo going on in Oak Harbor about the imminent invasion of that Great American discount buying power called “chain stores.”

There was a big hullabaloo in the 1960s, when Penney’s wanted to come in. They made it in later and now are gone again, but at that time they got a loud and definite... “No! No chain stores!”

It had always been thus. According to legend, one grocer whose father started a grocery store back in the 1890s was outraged that a “chain store” (whoever that might have been in those days), might come into this community with better prices for better looking food and force him out of business. Chain stores were evil. It meant the end of the small grocer who looked after the needs of the community, even offering credit to families he knew would never be able to pay up.

He said it was his belief that ultimately the standard of living of the average working man’s family would be lowered because of low wages paid to chain store employees. Personal interest, personal service, convenience of delivery and credit were not to be sneezed at. Chain store profits are spent almost any place but in the hometown, he said.

So it went for many years. Eventually chain stores moved in regardless, and the small grocer turned to selling other commodities or relying on super service, and found himself doing better than ever.

Such was the metamorphosis of the grocery store to the supermarket of today. Old-timers recall how one went into the grocery with a list, and the clerk behind the counter produced each item from the shelves and one was spared the effort of selecting one’s own groceries and lining up at the cashier. Perhaps some readers remember stories of how earlier deliveries were made each afternoon to homes via horse and buggy.

Far from the memories of other days, the dream at present is that one day a computer will be invented which will take the grocery list, fill it, deliver the groceries and put them all on the shelf in our home! Perhaps another to wash, iron and put the clothes away?

In Oak Harbor, before the U.S. Navy arrived, there were a number of home-owned grocery stores. Maylor’s General Store was the oldest, having been in business some 40 years, selling everything from utensils to postage stamps to hardware... along with groceries and yard goods!

Joe Maylor was a native son whose home still stands in Oak Harbor (now Jones Accounting behind what was once a bank, a lawyer’s office, then a women’s dress shop, now again a lawyer’s office). Joe’s home is a dignified white Victorian house with a lawn that at that time sloped down to the main street and was surrounded by a wrought iron fence.

One night the genial merchant was returning home after a long day’s work, as usual he was carrying the store’s cash in a bag. It was dark, and he was struck on the head and his money snatched. No one ever discovered who did the deed. Maylor wasn’t badly hurt except for the knowledge that a whole day’s receipts were missing.

It was the first such felony recorded for the town of Oak Harbor.

The Oak Harbor Producers Cooperative Store had four departments, groceries, dry goods and clothing, hardware, and feed.

Some co-op managers Dorothy Neil remembered were “Mac” McEachren, who also served as town mayor, Geert Zylstra and Chris Ernst. It was sold to Reke Zylstra and Arend Balster in the 1950s, and later became the Pioneer Department Store, where Old Town Mall is now. A lot of us “incomers” remember that.

There was Andy’s Grocery next to Oak Harbor Tavern, Barney’s Groceries, and later Ken Jensen’s on the waterside of West Pioneer, and Yorke Dyer’s Red and White Store.

Farm eggs were accepted by the dozen to trade for groceries in those depression days of no money... along with homemade cottage cheese. One Coupeville resident whose parents kept a store at Prairie Center told how a lady came each week with cottage cheese, for which there was little or no market. Not wanting to turn her down, his mother served the family cottage cheese every Friday night. That was supper. For the rest of his life he could not even look at cottage cheese.

Sixty years plus later one finds circumstances quite different, and just as well. The best thing about the “good old days” is that they are no more!

Buy a filbert orchard!

Among the many super-sells to Whidbey Islanders in the past 100 years or so, one occurred in the 1930s when a fast-talking promoter came up with the proposition that filberts would produce fabulous crops on Whidbey, and anyone who invested in even a small orchard would reap both a harvest and folding green.

It turned out to be a nutty scheme.

Only the “well-to-do” could afford to put in the filbert orchards. The Great Depression was on, and jobs were scarce. Even the county staggered shifts and divided jobs in order to give more men work. It was hard enough to earn enough money to buy basic groceries without investing in a new venture.

Still, there were those who did invest.

Oak Harbor and Coupeville were surrounded by farms in the early 1930s, so the filbert orchards were in the same category as an electronics or aircraft industry coming to town today.

Someone would have to pick the filberts; the orchards would have to be cared for; there might be a sorting shed. All this gave hope to people who gladly worked at anything for as little as a dollar a day so their families could eat.

Some trees in Oak Harbor remain, on the southeast side of town, and several near San de Fuca. The trees make excellent shrubbery for landscaping, but they somehow fell short of producing a crop for the investors. It was said later that the trees were the wrong kind.

The investors were obviously victims of super salesmen.

Lee Brainard moved to Whidbey as a Navy wife in 1961 and worked for the local paper. She moved onto the base in 1970 where she spent the next 15 years as editor and reporter for the Navy Crosswind. During that time she started working for Dorothy Neil, editing and publishing nine of Dorothy books and editing Spindrift Magazine. In 1990 she and her husband published the Town Crier, an Oak Harbor community newspaper. She is also an active member of the Oak Harbor Soroptimist club.