Hascal Love Grocery Store

This photo at the right is Hascal Love grocery store that used to be at Midway. This community of Midway was located half-way between Marion and Salem on Highway 60 West.

The people in the picture, left to right: C. W. Love, brother of Hascal, Reg Guess, Jap LaRue, Alfred Benton, Melvin Ramage, and Hascal and his daughter Joyce.

Hascal Love opened his grocery store in the early 1940's. Hascal's wife, Elizabeth Minner Love, daughters Linda and Joyce Love , lived in one side of the store building, while the grocery was in the other half.

As we know and remember, these local grocery stores were the center of the community. Not only a place to purchase grocery's and other needed items, they were a gathering place of friends and neighbors. Love's Grocery's Store was also a gathering place for good entertainment and good food. Hascal had one of the first black and white T.V.'s in the Midway community. On Saturday nights all the neighbors would come to their place to watch the wrestling show. Hascal was also well known for his bar-b-que, which he cooked and sold for many years.

Hascal had to sell the grocery in 1960 and he sold the store to Helen Teer.

These country stores are all gone now, unable to compete with the large grocery stores of today. But then, most of our little communities have almost disappeared also. They are ghost towns of the communities they used to be.