Off to Work: Dad was a Produce Clerk

When my father went off to work, it was to grocery stores or supermarkets as a produce clerk or produce manager. He worked for several different stores, but the longest was for LoRay Market and Safeway.

Safeway

When we lived in Pittsburg, he worked at Safeway. The city directory just says clerk, not specifically produce clerk. The directories from 1955 to 1962 identified his place of work as Safeway.

In 1963, they purchased a home in Walnut Creek. My father may have already been working there, and buying a house closer to work was more desirable.

LoRay

The LoRay store in Walnut Creek was only a few blocks away. There were three or four LoRay stores in the county. The name came from merging the owner's and his wife's names.

My father always drove to work, primarily because he started work at 5ish. This gave him time to put out all the produce that had been removed from the shelves and put into cold storage refrigerators. I believe this was before they created refrigerated display cases. Today, they are kept cool and have automatic watering systems. I remember my father using a narrow hose to wash down the vegetables in the displays.

In high school, my friend Beth, and I would stop by the store to get an apple to eat for a snack. Sometimes we bought day-old donuts from the bakery for 5 cents. By this time, he was the produce manager.

He also brought home tired fruit and vegetables for us to eat. My mother would make jam from old strawberries. We would get the outer cuttings from lettuce, old shriveled carrots, and celery to feed our rabbits and goat.

One of the things he did for the store was make the weekly ad signs that hung in the front window. He had large, colorful Magic Markers in black, blue, and red, and would write up the various items that would be on sale, along with their price, such as Corn Flakes, 4 for a $1, or Lettuce, 2 for 29¢. Remember when stores all had large windows in front?

Later, he became a buyer for the store and left the house even earlier (like 3 a.m.) to go to the produce market in Oakland to make purchases. He worked in the company office in Concord. LoRay was bought by Ralph’s Market. He worked for them for a few years and then was let go.

Fruit Stand

Once he had a fruit stand in Hayward. He purchased the produce from the markets in Oakland and then sold it at his stand. When I was locked out from my job at BART in 1979, I worked a few days with him. I don’t know how long he had the stand.

Safeway Again

Luckily, he was able to get a job with Safeway Stores and rejoined the Retail Clerks Union. He worked for them until his retirement in 1990. Here is a photo of my Dad from an ad for Bon Appetit, an upscale store that Safeway owned.

Bill is on the right

From an interview I had with my dad, I learned about his early jobs working at Mel’s Service Station (Flying A) in Concord, as a gofer for Fitzpatrick Chevrolet also in Concord, and on weekends as a “push starter” for midget racers at the race track in Pacheco.

I always thought that the produce displays where my dad worked always were so neat and orderly--just as he was.

#52Ancestors-Week 35: Off to Work

This is my eighth year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

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