The Grant General Store

The front window of The Grant General Store is full of wishes, whatnots and more.
Not practical things that we really need like flour and sugar and new spring seed-
But a footed brass lamp with a porcelain rose, high button shoes with pointy toes,
A music box that plays a song, inlaid wooden fan from far Hong Kong,
A turn-around doll with two different faces, a fancy dress with embroidered laces!
A cubby-hole desk and a cameo pin, a mirrored box to keep jewelry in.

A bell rings when I go inside, to real wooden floors so smooth you can slide!
Barrels of flour stacked higher than me, ten penny nails- Oh so much to see.
Piles of fabric, muslin and wool, calico, brocades—I look ‘til I’m full.
Up on a shelf out of little hands' reach are fancy hats of mauve and peach.
Metal strapped barrels with pickles in brine, cure-all tonics by Doctor Fitzlyme.
A checker board where the old men play, as they sit and spit most of the day.

The post office is here, any mail today? Has the Pony Express rider been this way?
Off in the corner, where I love to look are shelves full of every imagined book.
Adventure tales of lands far and near, a book that tells of the weather each year,
One with cut out dolls- you can change their clothes, Oh I’d dearly love one of those!
A book of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and look! Mrs. Grant has gotten new bonnets.
Red checked, blue flowered, one with pink stripes, she’s hanging them on a rack near the pipes.

Papa doesn’t have a store-bought one, he carved his himself on the porch in the sun.
There’s an enormous deer head up on the wall that one of the farmers shot last fall.
There’s slates for school and pieces of chalk, and a place to have tea where the ladies talk.
In the back’s where men get their gold weighed, and then have fights over what they are paid.
Papa’s a farmer, he says panning for gold is a sure fire way to never grow old.
To lust after anything just doesn’t suit--it’s like having a serpent coiled down in your boot.

Mrs. Grant has spices each in its own tin, saffron, mace and cinnamon.
My most favorite thing, I save until last, the long wooden counter fronted in glass.
Behind it are boxes all pretty and neat, row after row of everything sweet!
A streamer of licorice and a peppermint stick, and a foil wrapped butterscotch is what I’ll pick.
I’ve got four pennies from doing my chores; I might have enough for one thing more.
Mama’s order is boxed and it’s time to go, we’ll come back in the spring, after the snow.