Unboxing History

From Storefronts to Memories: The Vanishing World of Corner Stores

• Unboxing History | History Expert Jodi Wright-Gidley & Galveston Author Christine Hopkins • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Unboxing History Episode 2: From Storefronts to Memories: The Vanishing World of Corner Stores is a conversation between Christine Hopkins, Jodi Wright-Gidley, and Alfio Tropea. They discuss the history and significance of a unique artifact, a bicycle that was used for grocery store deliveries in the 1950s. The bicycle has been through various events, including being displayed at the Smithsonian and surviving Hurricane Ike. The podcast also touches on the history of corner stores and their decline over the years. The restored bicycle is currently on exhibit at the Galveston County Museum. More on the museum at www.galvestoncountyhistory.org



Thank you for listening to Unboxing History, presented by the Galveston County Museum.
For more information, visit our website.

History of the Galveston County Museum
The Galveston County Museum was formed in 1976. It was located on Market Street for many years. After Hurricane Ike damaged the HVAC and electrical systems in 2008, the unharmed artifacts were moved. Now, the museum is located in the Galveston County courthouse building at 722 Moody/21st Street in Galveston.

​Galveston County Museum is a joint project of the Galveston County Commissioners Court and Galveston County History, Inc. The museum cares for a collection of 20,000 artifacts and archives. We also maintain the Historical Commission's library. If you are interested in research or donating an artifact related to Galveston County history, please call 409.766.2340.

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Unboxing History Episode 2

[00:00:04] Christine Hopkins: Welcome to Unboxing History. I'm Christine Hopkins, a Galveston author and local expert and I'm 

[00:00:10] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Jodi Wright-Gidley, director of the Galveston County Museum. 

[00:00:13] Christine Hopkins: As you'd guess, the Galveston County Museum has a treasure trove of artifacts that we're going to share every month on Unboxing History. So Jodi, what's our treasure?

[00:00:25] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Well, our treasure is a unique item that has been through the Smithsonian, through Hurricane Ike, but it is too big to fit in our box, so we're going to have to step away from the desk to see it. 

[00:00:35] Jodi Wright-Gidley: in this month's podcast, we have a special guest, Mr. Alfio Tropea, who is going to unveil our artifact, Treasure of the Month.

[00:00:50] Jodi Wright-Gidley: So, the bicycle has a very interesting history that has to do with grocery stores and home deliveries. So, back in the early 1900s, we didn't [00:01:00] have the big grocery stores like we have today. We had small, neighborhood, corner grocery stores.

[00:01:05] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And Mr. Tropea's family owned and managed one of those stores. And this bicycle was part of how they operated the store. So, Mr. Tropea, can you talk about how the bike was used at your family's store?

[00:01:17] Alfio Tropea: Absolutely. We actually grew up, my parents actually acquired the grocery store in 1959 until about 1981.

[00:01:25] Alfio Tropea: And we actually lived above the grocery store. There were living quarters on the corner store. And one of our deals was free delivery to everyone in the neighborhood. So, we would deliver as far as maybe five, ten block radius in every direction on an average. And basically I grew up delivering by groceries on this bicycle.

[00:01:49] Alfio Tropea: And, we had some interesting, things that used to happen with this bicycle. Of course, when we opened the doors early in the morning at 7:30 in the morning, the bicycle was always inside and I'd [00:02:00] roll it outside and put it right on the, West side wall. Next to the door where everybody could see the bicycle and it was almost like an open and close sign for us.

[00:02:10] Alfio Tropea: And periodically somebody would borrow the bicycle to take a joyride. And we would find it later on, two, three, four blocks down in the neighborhood. And, uh, then we'd get it back, but it would continue to stay there for many years. And, we delivered to a lot of, I remember there was One of our main customers was Mr.

[00:02:34] Alfio Tropea: I. H. Kempner and Mrs. Kempner at 1502 Broadway. And I made several deliveries a day. I was a hot shot for them. For their, for their maids, their cook, ordered items she needed, and right away. So, a lot of times people would call in on my mother's, she would take the phone order on the phone, get the phone orders.

[00:02:57] Alfio Tropea: We'd put the order together, put it in a box, put it [00:03:00] in the basket, and I would take off and deliver it until I got old enough to drive. And then I was driving with a truck. Later on, we had hot shots. I had my cousin working at the store, and he would drive the bicycle. So the bicycle became basically part of the foundation of the structure of the store.

[00:03:17] Alfio Tropea: Our customers that came were all in the neighborhood. All fresh vegetables, frozen foods, fresh meat, fresh cut meats. We did business with tugboat. We did business with restaurants. And of course my dad made the famous Italian sausage that he used to make. Which today I continue to make for social holidays.

[00:03:38] Alfio Tropea: So, but it was a, it was a work of love. You had to work and sacrifice in a way. We started 7:30 in the morning until about 7:30 at night. We were open every day. Uh, my job was to go back downstairs after mom cooked upstairs, come back down about nine o'clock, mop the store, clean it up. And then be ready for the next day.

[00:03:59] Alfio Tropea: So, [00:04:00] Sundays was half a day, go to church, come back. And holidays, we would go to church, come back, and there were people standing at the store even though we were closed. So my dad said, Mom, go upstairs, you go finish cooking. Of course, he did it in Italian. And, you and me, we're going outside, we're going to open the store.

[00:04:18] Alfio Tropea: Let these people have what they need for two hours, and that's what we would do. 

[00:04:22] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Now the bicycle is here on exhibit at the museum now, but it's also been at the Smithsonian. Can you tell us more about how that happened? 

[00:04:30] Alfio Tropea: Yes, Ellen Beasley wrote a book called The Corner Stores. And Ellen, they were doing a big exhibit at the National Building Museum with the Smithsonian.

[00:04:41] Alfio Tropea: And they were going to have a set date to honor her and Betty Ticklet, I believe her name was. She was the photographer who shot all the pictures. And it was going to be a special showing and my mother got a phone call from [00:05:00] the National Building Museum asking if they could come and see the bicycle if we still had it.

[00:05:05] Alfio Tropea: Which, after we closed the business, I decided to keep the bicycle. We put it in the garage, put it up in the rafters, and there it stayed for many, many years. So, when my mother said, okay, she called me, I said, sure, we'll do that. They showed up, and what they did, I went, took it down, and of course, it was full of dirt and dust, and they loved it.

[00:05:26] Alfio Tropea: Wait, don't, leave it like that, I'm sorry, I didn't get to wash it. No, leave it just like that, with all the original dust they call the patina today, on an antique. So, we loaned it to them for six months, for the display. They had it crated, and they shipped it off. And I had several people that got to see it, and would take pictures and tell me about it.

[00:05:50] Alfio Tropea: I never got to go to the museum up there to see it. But it stayed there, and then after six months we had a phone call, they asked if we could have an extension [00:06:00] for another three months. And it stayed there for nine months. And then eventually we got it back, came back in a wooden crate, you could see the bicycle in there.

[00:06:09] Alfio Tropea: and I had a car business on 51st Street, and I left it on my showroom for many months. And then prior to Hurricane Ike, 2008. 2008, I took it back to my mother's garage, left it there, and of course, seven feet of water later. Besides everything else in the houses, you know, flooded and everything, this was floating around in the crate, in the salt water.

[00:06:32] Alfio Tropea: Which we washed, we got there, took care of everything else. This was one of the last items. And I washed it off, left it in the crate until 2016. After we restored our, our, you know, our own homes and stuff. And, uh, I took it out of the crate. The handlebars were rusted off, they were falling off. The rims were all rusted completely.[00:07:00] 

[00:07:00] Alfio Tropea: But the majority of everything on the bicycle was still intact. So I took it and I, and I took it apart and totally restored it with the help of, uh, Brian Bazeman from West End Cycles. And we were able to actually, I did the actual research on this and actually this is a 1956 Schwinn Cycle Truck is what it's actually called.

[00:07:24] Alfio Tropea: I found the original literature from this bicycle. The original VIN number is stamped back here on the frame, and that tells us that it's a 1956 model. Of course, it's got a 20 inch wheel in the front, 26, 27 in the rear. And we found the original decals from a place called Bicycle Heaven. And all the bearings, all the knobs, nuts and bolts all have AS on there stamped, which means Adolph Schwinn.

[00:07:52] Alfio Tropea: Which is an original Schwinn bicycle built in Chicago, Illinois. It's not in China, like maybe some of the new bikes are today. [00:08:00] Everything on this bike is original today except for the rims, and this tire is an original tire that we took off of a donor bike that Brian had in the warehouse. We had the rims, we put one tire here, the pedals I borrowed off the other bike.

[00:08:18] Alfio Tropea: And the handlebars. Everything else is the same original bike that you see in the old picture that was on display. I just painted it, put it back together. The one extra deal we did on this, because I thank Brian for the help he gave me, I wanted to pay him for all the extra parts. And Brian told me, no, you did a beautiful job, I just want to ask you to do one thing.

[00:08:40] Alfio Tropea: And he said, most likely this was bought here in Galveston back in the 50's. And his dad had the original Schwinn store there on 36th Street or 37th and Broadway. If you'll put the original decal on the bike like we did on all the bikes. So today, here we are, we have the West End Cycle decal. [00:09:00] In honor of West End Cycle and thanking him..

[00:09:03] Alfio Tropea: But this has actually become a very interesting piece now. Because when the museum was actually asking for items to be brought here. After I restored it, my wife said, What are you going to do with it now? I said, I may send it back to the Smithsonian. And just give it to them over there. Then I read the article in the newspaper about they needed an articles, so I came over here at the time.

[00:09:27] Alfio Tropea: It was Jennifer Wyckoff was the director. And I asked her if she'd be interested. I'll put it on loan to the museum. She said, yes. We put it in a corner on the other side of the museum. And then two or three months later she asked me to come back to the museum and she walked me back here and I was blown away.

[00:09:48] Alfio Tropea: And this is fantastic because it does honor all, not all the corner grocery stores, it's not just my parents or Estrella Tropea Food Store. The corner grocery store business were [00:10:00] a lot of Italians and back in the 1890s. At one time to time, early 1900s, probably about 223 grocery stores, corner stores in Galveston.

[00:10:12] Alfio Tropea: Of those, about 168 were Italian owned corner grocery stores. So you had the D'ambras, the Direchis, the Monettis, the The Michelettis, the, the Cantinis, the Pagnuccis. It, it was just so many and everybody worked hard. So it was it your customers were not only your customers to us, they were a family to us. So. That's how it was. 

[00:10:37] Christine Hopkins: Wow, Jodi, that is a real treasure for the museum collection. Tell us more about just this history related to 

[00:10:45] Jodi Wright-Gidley: corner stores. Well, the need for corner stores went away because after World War II, The economy evolved. People could afford a new car.

[00:10:54] Jodi Wright-Gidley: Each family had a car to drive to the grocery store in. Everybody could afford to have a [00:11:00] refrigerator in their home to keep their food cold. So the need for a little neighborhood corner store right up the street just sort of dwindled away. And then as the families running the stores retired, their children didn't take up the business and they went into other careers.

[00:11:13] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And so corner stores faded away. By the 70s, 80s, there were none around anymore. And so, but when I think about it, I think about how he talked about delivering to your home, you know, we get that today, but you know, we never get the same service like you would have gotten in a family corner store.

[00:11:31] Christine Hopkins: Oh no. When you think about even just popular. Pop media like the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel remember she calls into the store And she puts in her order and they have their list and then you just had your credit with the store And you know like you were saying there were a lot of people that didn't drive I mean my grandmother never drove and so she walked to the nearest corner store as you know forever as long as I could remember She would get up and walk to the closest corner store and get her groceries So what can people see [00:12:00] in this particular exhibit?

[00:12:01] Christine Hopkins: What's more of the things that are featured as part of this exhibit? 

[00:12:04] Jodi Wright-Gidley: So our exhibit includes a lot of images and artifacts from many of the corner stores that were in Galveston. So you will see an old cash register, ledger books, photographs. an old telephone, lots of things from all the corner stores.

[00:12:17] Christine Hopkins: 

[00:12:18] Christine Hopkins: Well, and I think for the younger generation, seeing that phone is, is something that they may not realize, like how big phones were then. This exhibit is a real treasure to Galveston. It really does tell a bigger story. And to know that that bike was all the way in at the Smithsonian for an exhibit . I mean, that's amazing

[00:12:37] Jodi Wright-Gidley: And now you can see it here at the Galveston County Museum. 

[00:12:40] Christine Hopkins: Well, thank you so much. I think this was a great exhibit, and we really encourage people to come out to the County Museum. And, one of the things that I look forward to is our next treasure. But when can people come visit now?

[00:12:52] Christine Hopkins: How can people come into the County Museum? 

[00:12:54] Jodi Wright-Gidley: So the museum is free for everybody on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. We're [00:13:00] located inside the County Building at 722 Moody or 21st Street. Free parking all around and free admission on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. Now for Tuesdays and Thursdays you can book a special game to play here at the museum or a private tour and just give us a call or visit our website.

[00:13:15] Christine Hopkins: Thanks so much. And, you know, if you're driving around Galveston, if you ever see a building where it looks like it's cut off or shaved off on the corner, that was probably a corner store. So, thanks for watching, or listening to Unboxing History. You can find us everywhere you find your podcasts, or if you want to watch a video of this podcast, check our YouTube channel or I 45 Now.