Another fading piece of the past? (02/18/2009)

Another icon from an earlier era may soon disappear.

And, no, I'm not referring to the latest retirement announcement from Brett Favre.

It seems that the future of the giant cornucopia gracing the Scott's supermarket on the south side of Fort Wayne is in doubt. Kroger, which owns the store, has said that it will be closed as part of a company-wide restructuring.

The cornucopia's days appear to be numbered.

For those of us old enough to remember, the cornucopia actually pre-dates Scott's. The store was originally Eavey's, and when it opened in 1957 it was billed as the world's largest grocery.

To shoppers from small town Indiana, it was a marvel. No trip to Fort Wayne during that era would have been complete without at least one wheedling attempt to get Mom to stop at Eavey's just so the kids could roam its endless aisles.

Keep in mind that at the time the largest grocery in Jay County was probably the Marsh store on Portland's East Main Street, which was housed in the building that's now home to Sertech Heating and Cooling.

In terms of square-footage, the Kroger store in the building that now houses the Ritz may have been as big.

But the Marsh store always felt more up-to-date.

Hamma's on South Meridian Street, in the building that's now home to Renegade Customs, a motorcycle shop, was a family favorite. And all over town there were seemingly countless corner groceries where you could buy a Coke or a Dreamsicle or a packet of baseball cards.

But all of them paled in comparison to the Eavey's in Fort Wayne.

It was in a league all its own, and visiting the store for the first time was like going to a theme park.

I think that was my first encounter with an automatic door that opened itself. I know it was my first encounter with a tank of live lobsters.

To a kid from Jay County in 1957, the notion that people would actually come to a store and buy one of these monsters and take it home to eat boggled the mind.

In that era, most trips to Fort Wayne revolved around visits to my Uncle Gus and Aunt Dorothy (who weren't really my aunt and uncle) and shopping at the Wolf and Dessauer department store (then enormous, now gone) and at Root's Camp and Ski Haus (also gone).

On every occasion, there would be lobbying to stop at Eavey's. But it was seldom successful.

Most of my trips to Eavey's, if I remember correctly, were with my friend Dan Cox and his parents. Dan's dad, Glen, had a small grocery in Gas City; and stopping by Eavey's to check on the future of his business was a justifiable detour.

The Coxes would take a cart and do some shopping while they rubber-necked.

Dan and I would walk goggle-eyed past foods we'd never heard of: Chocolate covered ants, rattlesnake meat. The sheer abundance and range of choice were staggering.

And the entertainment value was outstanding. If they had made us pay 25 cents at the door to get in to see the show, we gladly would have done so.

It's been decades since I walked through those doors. I stopped by in the 1970s, I think. I remember that it was smaller than in my memory and the years had not been very kind to it.

The lobster tank was still there, though. And there was a very real temptation to take one home.[[In-content Ad]]