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Tillie's
Chillie's....
The
Coldest Beer In Town
For
anyone who thinks this beer just gets cold by itself...think again! It's
a never-ending rotation schedule. They don't call it "The
Coldest Beer In Town" for nothing ;-]
We
don't just put the hot beer behind the cold beer when we re-stock, nnnoooooo!
We have to rotate the cold from the two refrigerators in the back of the
house. We take the beer from the storeroom and carry it to the back for
refrigeration, bring the new cold beer to the front cooler, stock the
new cold behind the old cold beer, over and over again... all ...day...
long.
Do
you guys even know how heavy those 30-packs are?? 6 packs,
12 packs, 18 packs, long necks, little necks, regular beer, light beer,
ice beer, ice light beer, bottles, cans, 16 oz'ers, 18 oz'ers -- Whew!
Mama Mia! Between all the different beers and all the different sizes
and brands of cigarettes, it's a hell of a lot to keep track of. And my
Aunt Tillie, God bless her, she did it all in her head; the ordering,
the inventory, the distributors. She kept all the numbers in her head.
She
had it down to a science. There
will never be another Aunt Tillie. Even now, I see her everywhere in that
house, the tiny woman with the great big heart, her distinctive gait,
shuffling through the kitchen into the store to wait on a
customer, or sometimes I can see her just standing in the kitchen, hands
on her hips, mischief in her eyes and always a smile. Always nurturing
and always nourishing. "Are you ok? He did WHAT! You don't need it...To
hell with him...Here... eat something... have a sang-wich, you'll feel
better." I can still hear her voice. Her birthday is today, April
10. I sure do miss her.
Thank
Goodness Maria added the new storage room to the side of the house and
re-claimed her living room and dining room space. When Aunt Tillie was
still here, all the beer inventory was stored in the living room!
I
remember a time I took my ex (a real beer lover) -- to visit Havre de
Grace for the first time. It was Fourth of July and we stayed with Aunt
Tillie. My God! 
Between
all the good food Aunt Tillie made and all that beer everywhere
in sight, the man thought he died and went to heaven!
That
is, until a certain July 4th cookout/get-together we attended after the
parade, and he commented to a couple of the Boyd boys about the freshness
of the Maryland blue crabs they bought. Uh oh! Fightin' words! It was
hurry up get outta there! My sister, Paula, practically threw my pocketbook
and stuff at me and rushed Michael and I outta there before it got nasty.
Michael was considered an "outsider" by these hometown ruffian
river rats and I think they would have used any excuse to start a brawl
with him. 
Poor
Mike, the gentle soul, he just didn't understand that mentality. Me, I
grew up around those kind of men whose quick tempers got the best of them
especially when they partied.
I
surprised myself at how I well remembered all the back alleys from that
house on Union Avenue to safe haven at Aunt Tillie's on Juniata Street.
It had been 20 years since I walked them. Michael was huffing and puffing
to keep up with me, and kept asking, "Are you sure
you know where we're going?" Some of those alleys are full of weird
characters. Mike came from a conservative family of Dutch descent and
grew up in a Leave-It-To-Beaver-type world. I'm sure he was more than
a little freaked by the whole chain of events. We weren't 
in
the door five minutes before a whole pick-up truck of Boyd's & Co.
showed up at the store. That was the first time I ever saw Michael pick
up a weapon and seriously prepare to use it! LOL, Thank goodness Aunt
Tillie intervened, and out of respect for her, they left and didn't return.
I grew up in this house on Juniata Street. After my grandmother died, and I was about 10 or 11, we moved up on the hill and Aunt Tillie and Maria settled in here. Soon after, Aunt Til made it a corner store that remains today. Not many of these Mom & Pop markets exist anymore, and her regular customers never want it to change. While the downstairs is completely different compared to what it was like when my sisters and I lived there, when I go upstairs, it's just like time stood still.
Most
of these photos are regular customers and friends snapped a couple of
days before I left for Florida in February of this year. These guys are
pretty "tame" as far as customers go...the really wackey ones
will be posted here as soon as I get some time to write a little bit about
them.
Click here for the photo commentary
