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"Heavy commodities like salt, sugar, tea and other staple groceries; nails and hardware, were shipped in by freight from the nearest railway station, Markham village; but most dry good and fancy groceries were personally selected on trips to the city and brought home in the light wagon drawn by a good team of drivers. A country general store could not put on "style". The two show windows, one on each side of the door, were seasonally full of "cow's breakfasts", as the universal farm straw hat was called, work gloves, seeds, lanterns, work boots. The Post Office and the grocery were on the left, as the customer entered; but immediately inside the door was the ubiquitous rack of whips. The Burton boys learned to their sorrow not to come in through the store if they had been, as was often the case, in any mischief—that is, if my father were in the store. My father would often buy whole pieces of suiting -woollens, which meant that for the next few years all the Burton children were dressed alike. As there was no such thing in country stores of those days as ready-made boys' clothing, my mother, with the assistance of a very inferior old 'Howe' sewing machine, and what aid she could get from domestic help and village seamstresses, was accustomed to cutting out and finishing the suits and overcoats which we wore. Four boys of different sizes had to wear suits of the same material and generally of the same weave, colour, and cut. Sometimes my mother would have to leave her work, even meals or the wash tub, to wait on women customers whose needs were too intimate and delicate to discuss with, or to expose to masculine minds. She was too busily occupied with her growing family and household duties ever to be much use as a saleswoman, and I know these diffident women would have been better served by men in the store, all of whom were quite familiar with all the facts of life. On the Grocery side, tea was not packaged, but came in chests from China, Japan and Assam. My father had a reputation for blending tea—Oolong, Young Hyson, and other famous Chinese packaged, advertised brands of India black tea were either unknown or in its infancy. After we moved to the city and I had been a few years at work, I remember P. C. Larkin's, Yonge St. shop, in which I suppose, Salada, was first packaged, with its window displaying a number of ebony elephants from India. These elephants were evidence that Larkin knew all about India; or at least about India tea. Sugar, flour, salt, port and oatmeal came in barrels, and it took considerable slugging by able-bodied men to handle and place these "Heavy" grocery items. The great trouble with oatmeal was the hulls of the oats which was hard to get rid of. Tillson's of Tilsonburg, was the first to "kiln" dry his oats, and thus get rid of the unpleasant hulls. However, hulls or no hulls, oatmeal was the universal Canadian breakfast. Picture: Oldest General Store Still Standing —Founded 1847 - Claremont, Ont.