Flashback Saturday

I just got back from making a quick trip up the road to Krogers to pick up a couple of things Mom needed. There in the lobby of the store was something that I coveted: a popcorn machine. Yep, the old school kind with the clear plexiglass sides. It wasn't on top of a cool rolling cart; it was on a card table, but I wanted it, nonehteless. As I was walking out with my bag of groceries, a Krogers clerk at the popcorn machine asked if I'd like a free bag of popcorn. You bet I did. As soon as I got into the Blazer, I started eating the popcorn and reminisced about how it tasted just like the popcorn from Murphey's.

Murphey's was a big dime store at Dixie Manor Shopping Center in the hood. Actually, I guess it was a combo department store/dime store, because they had everything. They had a record department where I'd buy my 45's and albums; they had a cool lunch counter where you could get stuff to eat; they had a fabric department, where Grandma would get all of her yarn and accessories for her crocheting. You get the picture. They even had a pet department, where you could get not only gold fish or parakeets, but you could get a small monkey. While Mom and Grandma were shopping at Murphey's, I would spend all of my time back in the pet section watching the monkeys in the cages. Well, not all of my time.

Before we went home, I would make a visit to the awesome candy counter at Murphey's, and with money Grandma would give me, I would always buy a bag of popcorn to take home with me. That was the rule - she'd buy me the popcorn but I had to wait till I got home to eat it, so I wouldn't end up dumping the bag in the car during the 8 minute trip back home.

The popcorn from Murphey's tasted like none other. To this day, I've had popcorn that came close, just like the popcorn from Kroger's today, but none has equaled Murphey's popcorn. I'm almost ready to buy a popcorn machine like the one at Kroger's just so I can try to duplicate the Murphey's popcorn. And we all know how I am once I get something in my head. As always, I'll keep you posted.

And P.S. -- with you all reading this post, you know the computer was back in operation. Well, quasi-operation.