forgot about picking up pop bottles- we used to walk up rt. 13 to French's store, half a mile away. My brother and I would take a different side of the road and look for bottles along the way. They brought 2 cents apiece and we'd stash them at the bottom of a big tree in the ditch by the road until we had 5 or 6 bottles stockpiled, enough to cash in for something. You could get a lot for a nickle or dime then. A dimes worth of penny candy was a lot, had plenty to share. Some penny candy was 2 for a penny, where a piece of penny candy costs 10 cents nowadays. That store had cookies in big glass containers sitting on the counter too, with big red lids on them. Wanted some ginger snaps, Mrs. French would reach in and get them with her hand and put them in a little paper bag for you. Big, soft, ginger snaps too- last ones I bought were so hard you almost had to hit it with a hammer to break it apart before you could eat it. There were lots of little country stores around then, but they had pretty much whatever you needed. If you wanted a pound of baloney for a bloney sammich, it didn't come in a little plastic container- it was a whole roll of baloney, and they'd slice off however much you wanted. Same thing with cheese, no such thing as the individual wrapped sliced cheese-if that really is cheese- most all country stores had a big "wheel" of cheese on the counter in a wooden box. They kept a big knife in the box too, and they'd cut what you wanted and put in on the scales. If you asked for a pound, they had to guess- might be a little over or under, but they were usually pretty close. Many times I skipped lunch at school and saved my lunch money-30 cents- and walked up to French's store when I got home from school and bought junk food. I'd get a 12 ounce Coke for 10 cents, a cake for 10 cents, and top it off with a 10 cent ice cream sammich. I had to buy them separately because I only had 30 cents cash money- if I bought it all together I would have had to pay a penny tax. And I had to go outside and sit on the bench to eat it, because I had to take the Coke bottle back- there was a 2 cent deposit on the bottle.