His mother was in the kitchen mixing dough for doughnuts. Jerry was glad she made doughnuts instead of buying bakery ones. How good doughnuts tasted hot out of the fat! He wished a few of them were done so he could have two or three to eat on his way to the store.
"Want me to fry 'em for you and then go to the store?" he offered.
"No. I need a carton of sour cream right away for my chocolate cake. And, let me see—five pounds of Idaho potatoes, two pounds of ground round steak—I feel like having meat loaf tonight—and two acorn squash, an avocado, a dozen oranges, and one loaf of white bread and one of whole wheat. Oh, and I've already telephoned and told Mr. Bartlett that you would be in to pick up a leg of lamb. He has spring lamb just in. You'll have to take your cart. There'll be too much for you to carry in your bicycle basket."
Jerry had felt lately that he was too old to be dragging home a cart filled with groceries. "How long will it be before Andy can take that old cart to the store? He can have it to keep any old time he'll take it to the store after groceries."
"You've only had it a year. Said you would be sure to use it for years. And you know Andy isn't nearly old enough to take a big cart out of the yard. Now run along. And don't stop to play on the way home."
Jerry got his cart out of the garage. The wheels squeaked but that didn't bother him. He met a couple of boys in his grade at school on his way to the store and arranged for baseball later.
Bartlett's store was on a street zoned only for houses, yet because the store had been there before the zoning law was passed it had been allowed to remain. The present proprietor was the third generation of Bartletts who had sold groceries there. He was a stout, pink-faced man, quite bald in front. Jerry said that Mr. Bartlett's forehead went way to the back of his head. When Jerry went in the store, Mr. Bartlett was waiting on a tall woman with a blue scarf over her head, and Bill, the clerk who put up orders, was tossing groceries into cartons, each carton for a customer.
Jerry had to wait while the woman with the blue scarf decided what she would have for Sunday dinner. It seemed to take her a long time to make up her mind. After trying without much success to engage Bill in conversation, Jerry stood in front of the candy showcase next to the cash register and wished he had money with him besides the ten-dollar bill his mother had given him to pay for the groceries.
My, but the candy looked yummy! There were glass trays of round mints, pink, white, green, and yellow. And caramels, chocolate-covered nuts, coconut bonbons, chocolate nougats—nothing there Jerry didn't like. He looked at the candy yearningly.
Now the lady had decided on a sirloin steak, thank goodness. Another customer came in but Jerry would be next to be waited on. He would speak right up and say he was next if Mr. Bartlett started to wait on somebody else first, he decided.