Jim Bradshaw: The more things change ...

According to the old French saying, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The observation is widely attributed to the Parisian writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, who died in 1890 and almost certainly had no idea that one day there would be mega-retailers such as Amazon and Walmart.
But I was reminded of Karr’s axiom by their latest battle for our bucks.
They, and probably some others, are apparently starting a big war over who can best deliver groceries to the kitchen door. What a novel concept!
Probably only a handful, at best, of the executives in those big corporations can remember their parents or grandparents picking up the phone and making an order first thing in the morning for the fixin’s for lunch, and again right after lunch for supper groceries. But, once upon a time, believe it or not, practically every grocery store had a delivery service. And the ice company, and dairies, and bakers, and even some coffee grinders.
My grandmother and mother ordered from Swice’s Grocery and General Mercantile, which was neat because Swice (who was kin) also sold hardware and a lot of other stuff.
He would deliver a bag of nails or a roll of chicken wire with the groceries. At least into the 1950s, Swice’s son brought a box of groceries before 10 a.m. practically every weekday, and heaven help him if he was late or brought the wrong thing.
Swice may have been one of the last to give up home delivery, and maybe kept delivering to us longer than some others because Aunt Bab (his aunt, my grandmother) could be a very persuasive person.
The privations of World War II were probably at least partly responsible for the demise of home delivery.
Grocers in Abbeville announced in summer of 1942, for example, that “they will put into effect a Federal regulation limiting delivery of groceries to one delivery a day,” according to news accounts.
Charles Franciol, who made the announcement, warned that one delivery meant exactly that, “No call backs are permitted in case there is no one home at the time of delivery.”
By February 1944, grocers, and everyone else, were feeling the pinch of “a growing shortage of gasoline and tires caused by the increased demands of our armed services.” By the summer of 1945, the delivery question nearly became moot.
The Lafayette Wholesale Co., which supplied grocery stores and restaurants, reported that it was getting only 25 percent of the goods received in “normal times” and that the company was “lower on food supplies than ever before.”
Some other wholesalers were getting even less.
It took a while even after the war ended for supplies of gasoline and tires and groceries to return to normal, and by the time they did, “supermarkets” were beginning to replace the local grocers who’d made the home deliveries.
Ice boxes were being replaced by fancy refrigerators that could keep food longer, making daily deliveries not nearly so necessary; and new cars made it easier for homemakers to do their own shopping.
“Aunt Bab” and some of her generation still demanded fresh groceries delivered to the door (which may be part of the reason we remember their cooking so fondly), but even they had to eventually give in to “modern times.”
Which, it appears, are about to be replaced by “new modern times” that aren’t as modern as some folk might think.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.