O.C. Stonestreet | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

I worked at the old A&P in Mooresville while in high school. The manager was Bill Scott, a very nervous, jittery man. Perhaps I contributed to his condition. Federal minimum wage at the time was $1.29 an hour, more than some young men made at other stores. The A&P had stores in many states, so they had to pay the federal minimum. We carried the groceries or pushed a shopping cart out to the customer’s car and put them in. Occasionally, you might get a tip, usually a quarter, to get a soda when you had a break.

After being in school, you worked at the grocery from about 3:30 p.m. until it closed at 9 p.m. Then, with no customers in the store, the “bagboys” as we were called, cleaned up and swept the place for Saturday’s onslaught. I would be so tired when I got home on Friday night that I often dreamed I was still bagging groceries.

Those in high school with cars participated in the classic tradition of “cruising” from the What-A-Burger on South Main to the Tastee-Freez a mile and a half or so away on North Main Street: cars full of boys or girls (usually not both) out riding through town to see and be seen.

A What-A-Burger, a quarter-pound hamburger, cost 35 cents, and with an order of fries and a small shake, a meal would be about a dollar. You and your date could eat for a buck a piece and 10 gallons of gas to fill up the tank would be about $3. But remember, federal minimum wage was $1.29. State minimum wage in North Carolina was 75 cents an hour.

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