Today in History: September 6

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“If Clarence Saunders lives long enough, Memphis will become the most beautiful city in the world just with the things Saunders built and lost.”—Ernie Pyle

Perhaps someone else would have dreamed up and built the ideas that Clarence Saunders built, but Saunders built them. If you will be shopping for tonight’s dinner at a grocery store today, you have Clarence Saunders to thank for several things you possibly take for granted: shopping for yourself at a grocery store, for one.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the opening of Saunders’ greatest achievement, the first ever self-service grocery store, a Piggly Wiggly (the name was his coinage and he never explained it), which is a grocery store chain that is still in business throughout the American South. The first store (a photo from inside it is above) was located at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee, and a historical marker sits there to this day.
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A Surprise

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Flash fiction alert: An attempt at fiction follows.
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Overworked and Underplayed

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“It was Ellis Island that ruined my shoulder.” A friend told me that recently. I pressed him to explain.

For many years he held a job etching signs for the sides of buildings, huge signs that are hand-made on enormous equipment, and the combination of a great deal of repetitive motion with the necessary delicate manipulation of heavy slabs of metal took its toll on his body. He blames the enormity of that one contract, the Ellis Island job, on his injury. Not the many other jobs that were similar, or the fact that he has continued etching large-scale objects, or that he has played electric guitar in a band for four decades on the side.

Someday, “The Ellis Island Job” will be a short story title from my fingers. Or the title of a song for his band.
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