The Corner Store

      It's had countless owners over the last 50 years and more than a few names, but to its customers it was either the "Corner Store" or the Little Store." There truly must be thousands of people who can claim when they walk through its doors today on the corner of Erie Ave and Glen Ave that they can remember patronizing it as a child. Parents would only go there in a pinch as the prices were much higher than in the Supermarkets. This was a lesson lost on most kids until they started earning paychecks themselves and had families of their own to support. 

     Today the Corner Store is the home of Parkwood Catering. It still serves its "Little Store" function for the neighborhood kids but supplements its income with a variety of catering offerings. To show how times have changed, I can't recall ever going to a catered party in Ridgewood, except for the annual Fish n Chips dinners held on Election Day at the Upper Ridgewood Community Church. These weren't exactly catered affairs as the Moms helped out the two paid professional ladies who fried all the fish and fries. The Moms plated everything and volunteer teenagers would act as waiters and waitresses and bring the food to people at the long tables. There was one other paid job: running the dish washer. This was a task no Mom would ever do for an event of this size so they would find a teenager, like myself, to run the machine and stack the dishes at the end of the night. Of course, this work was completed under the supervision of the Moms in attendance who would still be wiping down the counters like they were their own. I did attend plenty of parties while growing up in Ridgewood but it was a Mom or a combination thereof who were the caterers. Little did they know that the next generation of Moms in Ridgewood would come to rely so heavily upon other people to plan and prepare food for their parties. While much can be said for the certainty and uniformity of the food purchased from caterers, you absolutely lost the randomness that always accompanied events with multiple chefs. For instance, no caterer would ever bring a green jello in a mold to an event, but you could usually count on at least one at a block party, open house, or church social event. Names weren't attached to these dishes so in the likely occurrence that they went untouched there was not a lot of embarrassment or complaining to a caterer as to why they would ever make such a dish. No, the social event itself was the matter of chief concern and the fact food was being offered was a bonus. Since there were a lot fewer professional restaurateurs in those days than there are now, the organization of a typical Ridgewood party was shared and everybody attending always politely asked what they could do to help. The division of labor in that era was fairly straightforward: the men liked to hover around the charcoal grills, if it was summertime, and the party was held outside; the women would usually gravitate towards the kitchen to make sure all the food and utensils made it to the appropriate locations. Cleanup was also a communal activity though by the end of the party the hosts were usually so tired they would try and tell people that they would finish the clean up themselves. This I imagine was said in order to expedite their guest's departures. Though the social custom at the time was for the faithful friends to utter cries of "We'll help" and that they would hear no more about the hosts doing it all themselves. I would imagine this was mostly done out of righteous concern for the hosts and partly by the fact that the next party might be their turn to host.