The Tuesday Shopper

Here's what I remember.

Every Tuesday morning, we would load up the station wagon with everyone and drive on down to my grandparents' house. They lived about a mile from us. My grandmother (we kids called her Nina, my cousins called her Nana) would get into the car, and we'd be off to Portland.

Down Cottage Road, through Knightville on Ocean House Road and across the Fore River on the Million Dollar Bridge, which was replaced in 1997 with the higher, larger Casco Bay Bridge. Why it's called the Casco Bay Bridge is a bit of a mystery to me as it doesn't span Casco Bay.

When we hit the Portland side of the Fore River, we'd turn right to go down to Commercial Street where we'd take another right. This would take us along the industrialized banks of the Fore River where you could see large oil storage tanks in the distance and a lot of scrap metal behind rough fences.

Veer to the right, up a hill to a traffic rotary. A large ship's anchor decorated the small grassy area in the center of the rotary and was always an impressive sight to me. St. John's Street to Congress, take a left. This part of the route is difficult to remember exactly because much of that area has changed so much with the addition of roads, highways, on and off ramps and whatnot. But I do remember that there was an Arlan's Discount store in the plaza where Union Station used to reside on St. John Street. The Arlan's sticks in my mind as it had a basement level as well as main floor and I recall being fascinated by seeing stairs in a store.

Also, near the intersection of St. John Street and Congress Street, there was an S&H Green Stamp store. My mother used to bring her full books of stamps into the store and come out with some sort of item (a lamp comes to mind). It seemed quite magical to me.

However we ended up on Congress Street, at Westgate we'd take a right onto Stevens Avenue. Then a left onto Capisic Street. All the way to Brighton Avenue where we would finally reach our destination - Pine Tree Shopping Center.

Pine Tree Shopping Center was an L-shaped plaza with its anchor stores at both tips of the L.

We always started the shopping day at Sampson's grocery store. It was part of a chain that was eventually bought out by Hannaford's. The most memorable thing about the store was the conveyor belt that carried grocery bags along the inside front of the store, then did a u-turn through the glass to the outside front. You would pull your car up to the curb. Then an employee would take the bags from the conveyor belt and load them into your car for you.

After this was done, my father would drive the car over to the section of parking lot in front of the other anchor store, Zayre's department store. The rest of us would walk to Zayre's on the wide, covered sidewalk that connected all the stores in the plaza. My mother would sometimes stop in Jo-Ann Fabrics which was pure tedium for me as she wanted to look at fabric and patterns.

Eventually, we would make it to Zayre's though, and I always wanted to look at the toys, of course.

When we were finished with shopping at Pine Tree Shopping Center, we'd get in the car and go further down Brighton Avenue to another shopping center. This one had a Martin's grocery store and Bradlee's department store.

Both stores shared a wide common entrance. Shopping carts waited near the door. Bradlee's was on the left and Martin's on the right. My father often took us kids to an upstairs cafeteria located straight ahead where we could eat english muffins with grape jelly and watch the activity in both stores. I always thought that pushing the trays along the smooth steel rails was the coolest thing. And then to be able to sit in a booth and observe the shoppers below us from our dimly lit perch, well this was perhaps the best part of the whole Tuesday shopping experience.

Bradlee's also had, at the back of their store, a pet shop that we had to go upstairs to reach as well. It was mostly filled with fish tanks, and my mother would often pick up a couple fish to bring home for our own tank. I also recall my parents purchasing me items from Bradlee's that could be used at the beach. What they were, specifically, escapes my mind, but the memory persists.

Shopping once a week was a four-hour event. We'd make it home around lunch time after dropping Nina off at her house with her purchases.

I wrote all this down, not so much to tell a story, but as a way to not forget some of those things that have stayed with me from childhood.