During our childhood, whenever my mother went to the grocery store to buy some more Wonder Bread, a new pack of Salems and whatever else filled the cupboards of our North Boyer farm, we knew that we had about half an hour to do all pilfering, rummaging, or playing with off-limit items like food, cars and even the Victrola.

Someone was always assigned lookout at the front window to alert the others as soon as that purple '49 Ford sedan appeared in the roadway just beyond Joe Carter's house. That appearance signaled time to complete the project and get back to our usual milling around the place with no set direction. We learned this vigilance after a few times when she'd surprise us at the back door while we were dancing around the living room to Patti Page or Vaughn Monroe 33 RPM record tracks.

The Victrola has never been the same since those days of having its needle arm-wrestled back into place and its top slammed down with a crash loud enough to make her drop the brown grocery bags on the sink, come marching into the living room and ask what was going on.

"Nothing," was our stock answer and phony innocence marked our trio of expressions. Sometimes her life of quickly hiding the groceries from us hungry mouths was a pressing enough issue for her drop any further interrogation and simply let the mysterious living room crash issue go. She'd quickly get back into the kitchen to begin her covert food storage activities. At our house, those even included locked freezers and fruit room.

Mother purchased her goods at the Boyer Store on the corner of Larch and Boyer, established and owned by John and Margaret Bradetich. The whole Bradetich family helped out in the store. Prior to that, she had done a lot of her shopping at Chapman's food market on First Avenue, but the convenience of the Boyer Store eventually won out. Besides, less kid-inflicted home damage could be done with a shorter trip to town.

Since those days of the 1950s when Mother did have to go to town frequently because of her substandard food-hiding efforts, she and the rest of the family have patronized the long line of grocery markets evolving from that little store less than two miles from our house.

When Margaret and John moved to Fifth Avenue, where Sandpoint Super Drug now exists, we moved with them. Eventually, Les Rogers bought the store, and the Bradetiches moved on to establish a Discount Warehouse at the present Co-Op Country Store. We patronized both stores.

Then, Les moved north of town and established Rogers Thrift there. We followed. I believe the store has moved to the west section of the mall since then, and Staples now occupies the space where we used to buy our groceries. Now, in today's local paper, Yoke's Pac 'n Save has announced a complete store renovation to match its regional-store flavor as a Yoke's Fresh Market. We shop there and will continue to do so, probably until the day we die.

Mother, now 85, knows all the clerks, and they know her. She loves the pharmacists at Yoke's, and they love her. While shopping, she uses the cart for walking support and her cane for retrieving missions. She brags that it's especially useful for snagging those top-shelf items and directing them into her cart. After all, when you're 4 feet 11 and getting shorter, you need to improvise.

She no longer buys Salems and Wonder Bread, but she still thinks she needs to fill the cupboards and refrigerators as if preparing for the Army. Her kitchen is always loaded with cookies, Little Debbies and donut holes, and her refrigerator always maintains a good stock of Western Family medium cheddar cheese for my brothers who like to chop off big chunks and chew on them while visiting. More than 50 years later, some of us still feel the occasional urge to pilfer a cookie without her notice.

She no longer has to worry about house-destruction while shopping at the grocery store, except for a hairball deposit or two from the resident cats. Nowadays, the old Victrola sits on a bench in our Quansit with no tuning knobs, and it's definitely incapable of spinning any long-playing record albums for our spontaneous dance routines.

The evolution of our favored grocery store into a newer, better setting for purchasing our eats will, no doubt, add some spice to the winter months as we watch the changes take shape. In addition, with its subtle consistencies of down-home service, comfort and treasured historic significance for our family, I'm sure our Mother will feel that same sense of loyalty that has marked her many decades of keeping the cupboards full and her hungry kiddies satisfied.