An Acme snapshot
By Gene Murphy
Three feet high on black pole legs, red, cast-iron or some sturdy metal body, a glass globe holding the always beckoning salted peanuts, shelled, and a red metal top with a built-in lock.
At the front of the bottom red metal, just under the glass globe like a belt buckle, was a shiny silver handle to turn and an equally shiny silver flap covering a downward sloping chute.
The peanuts were shelled and very salty. Some had the brown stuff that comes with peanuts still around them but with each handful you also got a partial handful of loose brown peanut-wrapping stuff.
One penny and just short of two complete turns of the handle produced the satisfying sounds of, first, a clink as the penny fell inside – you could tell how empty or full of pennies it was by the sound if you listened for it – then the clicking of mysterious internal gears. The focusing moment summoned a feeling of risk, residue probably from an earlier attempt gone wrong. The sounds were muffled by metal casing, peanuts and brown peanut wrapping stuff.
Click, click, click, click, and the almost imperceptible sound of 8 to 10 salted peanuts falling an inch or two shifted your focus from listening to looking at the shiny flap. But not before attempting another turn of the handle, just in case you might get more. You never did.
Carefully cupping one hand under the flap, so as not to lose any of the precious goods, you raised the mirror-like cover with the other. Most of the peanuts would fall into your hand but a reach in with a finger to get any stragglers stuck in the chute usually paid off, at least in little brown wrapping stuff and sometimes with a peanut or two.
Then you could sit on the wooden-slat park bench next to the peanut machine and itself next to the store’s main counter. Getting groceries at Acme never took long but the folks usually talked to Bill, the stooped old man who ran the place, and whoever else might be in the store.
If the conversation got going you might try your luck and ask for a fudgecicle.