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In preparation for the Mississippi State Bulldogs’ roasting of the Arkansas Razorbacks last Saturday at Homecoming in Starkville, I was out back of the house late Friday night with the grill fired up cooking sausage and ribs to take to campus. Our tailgate theme, of course, was pork. Roasted pork we ate, and roast the hogs we did.

As the grease from the sausages dripped down and flared up over the fire the aroma filled the night air as well as my nostrils. I walked inside and said to my wife, “it smells like the A&P early on a Saturday morning out there.” “You can smell it out front too,” she said, and I thought the whole neighborhood must smell like the A&P.

My reference, though, came from some 40 plus years ago, give or take, when I made my spending money working in the A&P grocery store in Newton. On Saturday mornings Charles Thompson would be in the meat market preparing the fresh cuts of the day. My dad, who was the store manager, Charles, and C.L. Mann, would heat up the hot pad cellophane sealer on the meat wrapping machine, fashion a skillet out of tin foil, and cook us up some sausages for breakfast.

We’d grab a loaf of soft, fresh baked, white bread, right off of the bread truck, and delicious sausage sandwiches filled our bellies. That soft bread would stick to the roof of our mouths and the juicy, greasiness of the sausage would make our lips glisten brightly.

Seems like the entire store smelled of hot pork sausage and  early shoppers would catch a whiff and wonder aloud what was cooking. We could almost hear their stomach growling as they shopped the aisles. “Sure smells good in here,” I can still hear them say today.

Friday night, out back, it smelled just like the A&P in the late ‘70s. Smelled good. And, it was good. Both the memory and the meat.

Back in those days we ground the Eight O’clock coffee at the check-out stand and the smell of that fresh ground coffee is still one of my favorite memories of growing up in the A&P.

“Perk or drip,” would flow from the cashier’s mouth without ever missing a beat as the bag of coffee slid down the conveyor belt. The big red grinder, with the A&P logo on the side, would roar to life and inevitably someone would say, “if it only tasted as good as it smells.” Every time someone would say that, every single time. I thought it did taste that good!

All the while the produce carts were rolling back and forth through the swinging doors that led to the cooler. Fresh collards, and mustard and turnip greens would be crisping in the deep aluminum sink and slowly but surely the wilted greens from the previous day would almost always perk back up.

Red, ripe strawberries would be stacked high on the counter and bunches of bright yellow bananas would be lined up in neat little rows across the artificial turf. A wall of Nilla Wafers waited to be snagged up to make a fresh banana pudding for Sunday lunch.

Cabbage would be cleaned, and lettuce wrapped daily, and the old stuff would be reduced in price, and when too far gone, tossed into a box in the back for an old fellow who collected it to feed to his hogs.

Another fellow would pull up in an old beat up pickup and the bed would be filled with another load of freshly pulled, freshly hosed down greens. Fifty cents a bunch seems like was his asking price  and we’d sell them for ninety nine cents back on the inside.

Same thing happened in mid-summer, except it would be a truck bed full of sweet, juicy watermelons and we got to taste the first one on the tailgate before settling up and unloading the rest. 

Watermelons, it seems, are extra heavy when someone is throwing them at you from the back of a truck, but we never let on to that fact. He never slacked up, so we couldn’t either.

Ah, the A&P. It sure smelled like the A&P out back of our house Friday night.

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