What Was Once Molly's

The following was submitted by Virginia Slep:

During the years when I was growing up in the little town of North Reading, there were things that changed:  a high school was built, a new Catholic church was built, the bridge over the Ipswich River was rebuilt.  But one thing that never changed in all the years I lived there --except perhaps to grow a little older and more worn -- was Molly's.

Ryer's Store, as the sign over the front door read,  stood on the corner of Haverhill Street and Park Street.  It was a small, white clapboard- covered building that had clearly been a house at one time, but had been converted so that the front rooms were now a store.  The double green doors were worn with age and thousands of openings and closings, and the wooden threshold had long ago lost any trace of paint that it may once have held.  There was an old wooden screen door  -- summer and winter -- the kind that didn't close by itself;  you had to close it behind you to keep the flies out.  But nobody in town ever called the place Ryer's -- everybody knew it as Molly's.

Molly Ryer was old when we moved to town.  At least she seemed old to me when I was five -- and she still seemed old to me when I left North Reading as an adult. Molly was a short woman with thin gray hair that was always done up in a meager bun in the back.  She always wore a faded cotton house dress (as they were called then) under an old-fashioned apron: the kind that went over her head, covered her chest and the front of her dress, and tied behind her waist.  Her aprons were as  washed-out and as faded as her dresses, and the prints of both garments were so worn and faded-to-gray as to be indistinguishable. For all anybody could tell, she may have worn the same dress and apron every day for decades.  They were all as shapeless as she was.

Molly lived in the back part of the building, which was separated from the store by a curtain.  Out behind the house she kept chickens.  We could hear the soft clucking of the hens and the crowing of her rooster as we walked along Haverhill Street on our way to school every morning.  Our dog, Tippy, used to try to break into the pen and chase her chickens, and Molly didn't appreciate him a whole lot.  One time Tippy came home with the side of his forehead all bashed  in and bloody, and people said that Molly had chased him and hit him with a baseball bat. Tippy was never right after that.  (We felt sort of badly about it -- but Mrs. Johnson's Saint Bernard used to break into our pen and chase our chickens -- so things sort of evened out.)

Molly was a very silent woman.  Other than to tell us how much we owed her, I don't think she ever talked to anybody.  But in spite of her silence, her store was an indispensible part of our part of town.  She sold the daily papers: the Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, the Boston Globe, the Record-American. She sold bread and milk and cigarettes and a variety of small items a person might run out of: canned soup, canned peas,  crackers,  peanut butter, cake mixes.   Every man in our neighborhood would stop at Molly's on his way home from work to buy the paper.  If we ran out of anything, we could just call Molly's:  "Hi Molly, this is Virginia McNeil.  When my father gets there please ask him to pick up a loaf of bread and some milk."  Soon, Dad would be home with the required items.  Molly never forgot.

The best thing about Molly's was the penny candy and the popsicles.  The penny candy was housed in an old, wood-framed glass case just inside the door.  If fortune had smiled on us and we had a couple of pennies or even (wow!) a nickel, we could go to Molly's and agonize over which pieces of penny candy to buy.  Molly would open up a small brown paper bags, and stand there patiently as we made our selections.   Sometimes if I had a bad cough, Mom would give me a nickel to stop  at Molly's on the way to school  and buy a package of Smith Brothers cough drops (the brown ones that really worked, not the cherry flavored ones that were more like candy.)  It was so tempting to just say the heck with the cough -- and spend the nickel on hard candies instead.

Right in the center of the store stood the old, worn rectangular metal freezer case where the popsicles were kept. Each summer,  Molly always managed to have the best popsicles!  Orange popsicles were  always wonderful on a sweltering summer day,  but no other store ever seemed to have banana popsicles, or root beer popsicles.  It was worth saving our nickels  for months to enjoy some of those!  Word would spread fast in the kids' underground --  Molly's got root beer popsicles! -- and we would rush down to get one before they were all gone.  When I was in high school, Molly started to sell Brownie Bars -- orange sherbet on a stick covered with a chocolate shell.  Those were the best!  I'd drive to North Reading today if I thought I could buy one!

As the years passed, Molly spent more time sitting on a chair in the corner while her nephew Bill Ryer, who lived across the street, worked behind the counter. Bill was a friendly fellow who loved to chat, in stark contrast to his aunt.  Even when I stopped in after  an absence of fifteen years, Bill took one look at me and said, "You're one of the McNeil girls, aren't you!  I just can't remember which one!"  Eventually, Molly disappeared  quietly from the scene.  She continued to live over the store for another decade or so, but I don't think anybody ever saw her.  Nevertheless, everybody still called the store Molly's. 

About two years ago, someone cleared the land and built a large, colonial-looking building, red with black shutters.  It's still called Ryer's Store, and the old sign hangs over the entrance.  Inside, you can buy gourmet sandwiches and cookies,  prepared salads, bottles of "designer" water , and beer and wine (liquor?! Molly must be turning over in her grave!!)  and it's a very nice addition to the center of town.  The sales people are mostly teenagers, and when I try to tell them about how I used to stop in for popsicles and penny candy, their expression clearly says "How can anybody possibly be that old!!"

But in one corner of the store is the old metal freezer case, still used for popsicles and ice cream bars. The new owner said she saved it deliberately, just to keep something from the old days when everybody called the place Molly's.  I always go over and run my hand along the side, greeting my old friend.  Maybe -- just maybe -- it remembers me, like Molly  always used to.