Hollywood, Aug. 19, 1893. Samuel Eberly Gross opened this “picturesque” new subdivision, with wavy streets, grand houses, and a wood frame store building located at the eastern corner of Hollywood and Brookfield avenues.
Above the 1,600 square foot store was a long, open room, suitable for both important assemblies and recreational purposes. Club meetings, political gatherings and religious services were held here until longtime storekeeper O.V. Grant and his family took up residence in the newly partitioned off apartments upstairs.
This truly was a country store, in a sparsely settled country setting. As the years rolled on, the store at 700 Brookfield Ave. became 8420 Brookfield Ave. In the 1920s, two brick store fronts along Hollywood Avenue were added to the rear of the 1893 building. Today the building houses The Paw and the Cyberdog Cafe, which are operated by Riverside-Brookfield High School.
In the late 1960s, Norman and Evelyn Scaman of Riverside were looking for a suitable building to set up their collection of antiques, advertising memorabilia, grocery and drug products gathered over 25 years. Evelyn had suggested that Norman put the collection into a store, and the idea just “stuck in [his] mind.”
Norm was marketing manager for the Sealtest Ice Cream Company until his retirement on May 1, 1972. If you remember the slogan “Get the Best”Get Sealtest,” he’s the one who came up with that.
The Scamans had also been going on retreats to Michigan, and to check out the state of their Christmas tree farms. Later, Norm was fond of relating the story.
“At first it took us five hours to get there, but after awhile it took 15 hours, because I’d stop at every garage sale and junk shop on the road,” he said. “If I saw a sign that said ‘Antiques,’ I’d put the brakes on.”
Then in 1971, they discovered the empty 78-year-old store building in Hollywood, and decided that this was exactly what they were looking for. They bought the building, with its upper apartments, rear stores and all, rolled up their sleeves and went to work. This was not going to be an easy job.
Old but still usable oak shelving from other long-closed stores was set up against the east and west walls, with three wooden, rolling-wheeled ladders attached to them.
Though there was plenty to stock the shelves with, beginning on Nov. 1, Norm sent out an attractive form letter to grocery and drug companies, telling of his intent to open a Grocery Store Museum.
“My plans call for featuring old advertising signs of grocery products, and all the cans and bottles on the shelves will be old or discontinued packaging,” Norm wrote. “If you have any old duplicate signs, old packages or reproductions, labels, you would like to be displayed in the museum, I’ll be happy to pick them up and pay for same if necessary.”
Some companies responded favorably with old cans, bottles, packages, labels and signs.
“We hope,” ended Norm, “this will provide the entire Grocery Industry and their friends with a place to enjoy and enable them to show their kids and grandchildren how it used to be in the olden days.”
From the beginning, this was to be a museum where children were welcome.
Sunday, Oct. 1, 1972, the Olde Country Store Museum opened. From the beginning, visitors realized that this was like an old-time store scooped up out of the past, and brought into the present, when even then friendly little mom and pop stores were closing their doors forever. But here were genial proprietors Norm and Evelyn, keeping the spirit alive.
“How ya doin’, young fella?” Norm would ask boys coming in.
When girls entered, he was adaptable. “Good afternoon, ladies. What can I do for you?”
Sometimes he just said “Afternoon, girls,” whether the girls were young or mature women who smiled at his remark.
While Norm might crack jokes with you or tell you true, but amazing stories of his days as a young athlete, Evelyn spoke to you with a voice and manner that made her seem like everybody’s ideal grandmother.
Lining the shelves were tins and packages, usually empty of coffee, tea or whatever had once been in them. You never knew what you might find in a glass-fronted display case: an antique toy or a set of dishes long gone out of style. Against a wall, a cardboard standup sign showed a 1920s-dressed girl with a market basket, taking a tin of Hills Brothers Coffee from a turbaned, white-bearded gentleman wearing a long robe. Campbell’s Soup cans were of unfamiliar varieties, such as Oxtail Soup, Consomme Madrilene, Mock Turtle and Pepper Pot.
There was so much to see and so much you might easily miss seeing. What about the golden brass, electric 1910 cash register, or the 1900 rural post office set up, or the 1902 biscuit display box?
Did the 1895 coffee grinder from Mesick, Mich. still work? More locally, an ice-powered dairy refrigerator from 3345 Prairie Ave. now sat iceless, with empty milk bottles inside. If this was too much to take in all at once, visitors were encouraged to come back again, soon. Or they could just set a spell with Norm, and play checkers on a box next to the old pot-bellied stove. That’s what 9-year-old Hollywood resident Tony DeCola did.
At first, Norm thought that “I’ve got so much of [this] stuff, I might as well sell some of it.”
However, this policy altered over the following years. If he had a duplicate of something, he might sell the extra to you. Especially if he liked you. The ladies he would sometimes charge “sales tax,” which was a kiss. Some things he would never sell, such as the 1910 cash register. In 1978 he revealed that “I’d never tell [people] it wasn’t for sale. To turn ’em down, I’d say it was $500. But I can’t use that line anymore, because they say ‘I’ll take it.'”
As for kids, there was always that glass display case full of candy for sale. Soon after the opening day, when the Hollywood School let out, the kids would crowd into the store and drool over all the candy just sitting there, waiting to be bought.
Many people would casually stroll in, look around, get interested in looking at a few things, and then react in surprise when they discovered how much time had passed. Time seemed to have stopped, or at least slowed. Once you were in here, the hustle and bustle of the outside world seemed far away and insignificant.
North Riversiders found the store an ideal location to use for the village’s Golden Anniversary in 1973. Residents dressed up in old time costume and posed as 1920s flappers, southern belles, or in old-time bathing suits against the backdrop of long ago.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, local Riverside artist John Slobodnik came to the store to find images to put in his paintings of the days gone by. Prior to this, he had gone to antique shops and either rented, borrowed or bought old objects to use as props for his work. He’d take photographs of the items, and incorporate them into his art. The Scamans let him take many photos of the store and appreciated his interest.
Slobodnik used to do the popular cover paintings for the Good Old Days magazine. The cover of the March, 1976 issue shows a boy in a white store apron and with a pencil behind his right ear, almost smirking at a thoughtful elderly man, who is aware of the cold fact that this young whippersnapper is about to win the checker game set up between them, on top of a barrel.
In the background is a black pot-bellied stove, similar to the Volcano one at the Olde Country Store. Above both players’ heads dangle various items, the same as easily seen in the Scaman’s real-life store.
The years crawled by. Some items were sold, others were bought and put on display. Longtime visitors recall when bags and boxes of collectible beer cans lined the aisles, then slowly vanished as interest in that particular area of collecting declined.
By 1978, the Scamans had moved to Brookfield, at 9532 Washington Ave. It was at this address, in Dec. 1980, that an historic meeting of the Brookfield Historical Society occurred, considering whether to go ahead and save the old Grossdale Train Station, or give up the effort.
The secret ballot vote, under the direction of BHS president Norm Scaman, was in favor of saving the station. Years later, the Scamans moved back to Riverside, where they remained to the end of their days.
Heart surgery in July 1993 briefly took Norm away from the store, leaving Evelyn to look after customers. It was during this time that I began helping out, at least every Sunday, cleaning, and also taking care of customers.
When Norm was well enough to return, I still found myself helping. I’d gotten used to it. So I said to him one day, “You know, Norm with all the work I’m doing around here, you oughta appoint me chief clerk.” Then and there, he replied, “That’s a good idea. You are now chief clerk of the Olde Country Store.”
In 1997, he promoted me to general manager of the store, then known as the Olde Hollywood Store, as a result of the old Hollywood train stop sign being placed where the “Country” letters used to be on the front of the building.
The year 1997 also marked the store’s 25th anniversary. The celebration lasted for three days, from Oct. 3-5. Norm, Evelyn (recovered enough from hip surgery to be out), and myself all dressed up in old-fashioned costumes for the event, which drew in old and new customers and friends. Free apples, ice cream, cake, cookies and punch were given to all.
Norm had received many offers to buy the store and its contents over the years, but he had never wanted to sell. Finally, during the December of 1998, the unwelcome news came. The store was closing.
“It’s too much for me,” said Norm to Landmark writer Mark Yurkiw. Norm admitted that at the time he had no solid offers, but that he would have liked to sell the whole building and contents, intact.
But the end was not yet over.
“I was getting stir crazy,” said Norm. On Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 30 and 31, 1999, the store reopened. Although the reopening had not been publicized, people seemed to find out about it, and the weekend was a busier one than usual.
For the next four months, the store remained open, until the time of Evelyn’s passing on June 8. Would the store open again, after awhile? Norm decided it would, but fate decreed otherwise.
On Thursday evening, June 11, he had a bad fall and fractured his hip. He was taken immediately to McNeal Hospital, and came out of surgery with no problems. Within a week, he was at the British Home, regaling residents with his stories. Though much thinner, he looked like he was on the long road to recovery.
Then, Sunday morning, Oct. 17, 1999, Norman Landon Scaman died of kidney failure. The Olde Country (Hollywood) Store would never reopen. The next year, on Saturday, March 25, 2000, Auctioneer Lane R. Hyett auctioned off the store fixtures and the nearly 107-year-old building.
The next day, at the National Guard Armory at 8620 Cermak Road in North Riverside, the amazing contents of the store were auctioned. The standup sign of the Hills Brothers Coffee man and child went for $800, a bargain when you consider Norm once declared he wouldn’t take $1,000 for it.
Now the era of the old country stores was surely at an end. But the original 1893 building’s usefulness was not. In its place, in 2003, RB’s The Paw restaurant opened here. You can’t keep a good building down.