The Family Store

RELICS: THE FAMILY STORE AND THE GREATEST GENERATION

(a story told to me by Katherine)

Miss Eloise and Mr. Monroe Rutland lived in Roseland and had six children.  Miss Eloise had no money and no transportation. She rode the Eldridge Bus to Amite and got a job working at The Green and White Grocery for Tony Guzzardo.  She would later work for Wesley’s on the other side of town.  She walked to the bus stop in Roseland and then from the bus stop in Amite to the Green and White.  She worked 6 days a week and saved her money, her goal was to have a store of her own.  In 1948 she had enough to build the little store on Highway 51 just North of Roseland, very near her house.

Miss Eloise ran the store 7 days a week from early in the morning until 7 at night.  Customers would sometimes come to her house after she closed and she would go back and open to get them what they needed. The store served many families that lived close by. Cindy Allen remembers that Miss Eloise sold cookies out of a big jar for 1 cent a piece and also raised tomatoes behind the store. She also had sliced meats.   Katherine, her daughter, who visited with me, said she was in the 5^th grade when her mother’s store opened and she went after school to help. Later she would be left to run the store while her mother worked to raise cattle. (At one time she had nearly 100).  Meanwhile Mr. Monroe bought a gravel truck and Eloise took the calls at the store for him.  He would later get a truck for his son, and Eloise handled the orders for both from her store. 

Eloise would close her store in 1962, to retire.  Her family makes repairs to keep in as she left it