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ROUSES.COM
7
ROSE’S MARKET
but you have to remember that things were
different back then. First off, there weren’t
so many chain restaurants. And local diners
and eateries displayed a bit more personal
touch and individualistic pride than you
often see today.
Nothing was generic. Including sugar
packets.
This was a time before all those pink,
blue and yellow sugar-substitutes started
competing for your attention when you
ordered a cup of coffee. Forgive me for
sounding like an old fart, but this was back
when sugar was sugar!
And instead of the generic white packets
you see today that generally just say
“Domino” or some other major food brand
or distributor,you got personalized packages
with the name and address of the business
on it, and perhaps a logo, maybe even a tiny,
postage-stamp-sized work of art.
(Remember postage stamps? Yeah, I
collected those, too.)
Back then, sugar packets were a lot like
matchbooks used to be up until everyone
quit smoking in bars: An advertisement for
the business, as well as a memento from
where you had been.
And I grew up in Maryland. It wasn’t like
growing up in New Orleans, where I live
now, where going out to restaurants is part
of the cultural fabric of life. When I was a
kid, going out to eat was a Big Deal.
Going out to eat marked a special occasion
or, even better, a family vacation. So the
sugar packets I pocketed at restaurants
became markers of the major events of
my youth: Road trips, holidays, the beach,
the mountains, family reunions, sporting
events, graduations, weddings and, yes, even
funerals.
I loved the little stories the sugar packets
told. The little pictures. The names of the
restaurants.
And more than anything — the place
names: Wilmington, Delaware; Ocean
City, Maryland; Seaside, New Jersey; The
Chesapeake Bay; Harpers Ferry, West
Virginia; Mahoney City, Pennsylvania;
Canton, Ohio and Cooperstown, New
York — those last two representing trips
my dad took us to the Football and
Baseball Halls of Fame.
Who wouldn’t want to remember all of
that with … sugar packets?
OK, like I said: I was a bit strange.
But they came from highway diners
and roadside shanties and fake log
cabins and waterfront seafood shacks
and motel lounges. I thought these
places were really sexy, although I’m
sure I would have used a different term
back then.
But they appealed to me, that Roadside
Americana thing. And I truly cannot tell
you how and why I decided to mark these
occasions with sugar packets; maybe I
couldn’t afford postcards? I don’t know.
I saved them for the same reason people save
anything: They spoke to me.They told me a
story, my story. They affirmed that my life
was rich with family, travel and adventure.
They were poignant, although admittedly
unusual, mementos of a life well lived. The
sugar packets I saved told the story of my
life, a diary of the places I went and the trips
I took and the people I met.
I mounted them in the stamp collecting
albums my parents had given me to help
me start that hobby. But I put off stamp
collecting for a few years. The way I saw
it, stamps told stories about faraway places
that I would probably never see. Postage
stamps told the story of other peoples’ lives,
not mine.
I amassed a pretty large sum of sugar packets
in my youth. Leafing through my catalogues
late at night under a desk lamp when I was
supposed to be in bed — it made me happy.
And then things got weird.
• • •