Looking back, it had the simplicity of Grover’s Corners in Our Town. Not that Grandma and Grandpa Mann lived on the typical square block. No, think isosceles triangle–or a piece of cheesecake, a small, narrow piece.

Imagine the intersection of State Street and Packard as the tip, widening back–the length of a city block–to Hill Street. A triangular block of sidewalks and buildings, businesses and residences, in the heart of Ann Arbor.

Today, students occupy the neighborhood. The block is their cafeteria, serving up everything from cheesesteaks to chapatis. But eighty years ago, families lived, worked, and shopped there.

My maternal grandparents, Warren and Anna Mann, lived on the Packard side of the block for almost fifty years. I spent the better part of my childhood summers with them in the early 1930s, then part of the summers in my junior and senior high school years. Later, Thanksgiving dinner and occasional visits spread through the years.

Grandpa Mann was a hatter–no relation to the one in Alice in Wonderland–and his place of business was called the Factory Hat Store.

It was located at 617 Packard–midway on that side of the block–and their residence was part of the building. You entered the store at street level; the family’s front porch was off to the side, up a short flight of stairs. There was an interior stairway, too, just off a room Grandpa Mann used as a study, that led down into the store. As a child I would often sit on the top step and watch the customers come in, then turn to the glass counters to their right, where grandpa had his display of hats.

He not only sold hats, he cleaned and blocked them. He had a small workshop behind the house, with a big lift-up side that he opened to vent the fumes when he worked with naphtha–a pungent cleaner, I assure you. Grandma Mann and I knew when he was out there cleaning hats.

Next door, on the corner of Packard and Hill, was a Standard Oil service station. Family photos show the excavation for it and some of the construction work.

On the other side was an A&P store–the dominant grocery chain then. I remember two things about it vividly: the neatly laid rows of floorboards, and the wonderful aroma of freshly ground coffee as you walked in. The grinder was just opposite the door, at the near end of the counter.

A man came to the counter to wait on you. A can of green beans? He went to a wall with shelves up to the ceiling–a veritable library of canned fruits and vegetables, with sections for jellies and jams and other staples. If the can was on a high shelf, he fetched it down with a wooden pole with a clamp at one end that he could close with the grip on the handle.

Meat was handled by the butcher behind a glass display case, much like the butcher shops that have been brought back as showpieces in modern supermarkets. He would wrap your item in plain paper–and tie it with string.

He made a small knot at the center. And at home Grandma Mann, like my other grandmother, would cut the string close to the knot, then straighten out the rest and wrap it around a ball of saved string already the size of a softball. Those were the days of the Great Depression, and nothing was wasted.

As he assembled your order, the grocer would pull out a brown paper bag, take a pencil from behind his ear, write the price of each item on the bag, then add it up. Two No. 2 cans of green beans would have been 15c. A pound of hamburger, 10c. A dozen eggs, 15c. And a pound of Eight O’Clock Coffee, the A&P brand, 19c. There were no credit cards; it was cash or charged to your account.

The Calkins-Fletcher Drug Store was next to the A&P. At the intersection of State and Packard, its front was pointed–like the bow of a ship. The main entrance was at the point of the bow. There were also entrances on Packard and on State.

Calkins-Fletcher’s soda fountain was a frequent destination for Grandpa Mann. We all loved its lemon custard ice cream. The attendant would hand pack it into pint- or quart-sized cardboard containers for him to bring home.

Mr. and Mrs. Mosher and their son, Bud, lived behind Grandma and Grandpa Mann. The backyards met.

In the fall of 1918, at the start of the great flu epidemic that would kill millions around the world, my mother came down with the flu. When she was at her sickest–her temperature sky-high, almost delusional–she heard gunfire under her bedroom window. It terrified her, she later told me: she thought the Germans had invaded and reached Ann Arbor.

It was actually Mr. Mosher, in his backyard, firing his rifle into the air to celebrate the Armistice that ended WWI. We still celebrate it as Veterans Day.

I think Mr. Mosher was gone when mother and I returned in 1956 for Grandma Mann’s funeral. But Mrs. Mosher came, and I seem to recall Bud was with her.

The Standard Oil service station was still in business–I parked there–but by then the A&P was gone. The Bentley Historical Library’s collection of Ann Arbor city directories last shows it in 1945. Calkins-Fletcher last appears in 1955. Today, Campus Corner occupies both spaces, selling convenience store groceries, beer, and liquor–Grey Goose on the shelf, not green beans.

In 1960, “Campus Corner was the only place to get beer on campus,” recalls Jim Chaconas of Colliers International, which handles commercial real estate. He remembers it well, because his father had a beer distributorship, and he made deliveries there. Nine-year-old Jim rode along on the truck.

What were once the A&P’s side entrances are now the only entrances: the one in the “bow” is now closed off and occupied by another necessity of student life, an ATM.

Grandpa Mann’s store is still there, but now has a new address, 619, and the glass cases display chocolate croissants, not straw hats, and pecan sticky buns instead of grey fedoras. Katy Loy has run the Pastry Peddler Bakery & Cafe there since 2008–cappuccino and espresso aromas to be savored, even better than the old ground coffee at the A&P.

The first floor of the old residence is now Loy’s prep room. The second floor, the former bedrooms, now owns the 617 address. It’s occupied by PJ’s Records–which sells old 78s, 33s, LP albums, CDs, and DVDs. Some of the songs on the records on the bookshelves that line the walls or fill the bins were played on the radio when Grandma and Grandpa Mann lived there.

Jeff Taras, who owns PJ’s with his brother, Marc, is glad to walk back through the musical history the records bear witness to–the Beatles, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor. Named for former partner P.J. Ryder, PJ’s had the street-level spot when it opened in 1981. In 1988, landlord Dennis Loy–Katy’s dad–remodeled the upper floors, and PJs moved upstairs.

The old Standard Oil station building still stands, but with a new interior and exterior it’s now Ali Baba’s restaurant. Brothers Omar and Adnan Dari did the conversion in 1992. Omar explains they’d settled in Ann Arbor when they came to this country from Palestine but had started out in the restaurant business in Jackson. After a dozen years, they decided to close that place and start a new one: “I just happened to be passing by on Packard Road and saw it to be empty.”

I do not remember a single restaurant or eatery in all the years I spent on the block. When Grandma and Grandpa Mann went out to dinner, which they rarely did, they’d take me to the Women’s League on campus. But now, two other former gas stations across from Ali Baba’s also dispense food–Jimmy John’s subs and Cottage Inn pizza. Up at the corner of State and Hill is Quickie Burgers & Dogs. Coming down State there’s Mr. Spot’s, Rod’s Diner, Pizza Bob’s. Across Packard are a Subway, Bell’s Pizza, and R.U.B. BBQ Pub. Grover’s Corners is now an outdoor food court!

Katy Loy’s family is a culinary bridge across the years. According to the Pastry Peddler website, “From the 50s-70s, Loy’s family owned several Ann Arbor eateries such as Pizza Loy’s and Dairy Joy, Loy’s Speedy Lunch, Double D, and Loy’s Snappy Service.”

Katy bakes the blueberry muffins for the Pastry Peddler in stainless steel industrial ovens, prepped in (or near) the old kitchen where Grandma Mann baked hers in the oven of a porcelain-steel stove on cabriolet legs. Lemon ginger scones? Not in her recipe book.

Yet the Blue Front, a landmark at the corners for close to ninety years, is still there, with a fresh coat of paint. After closing last spring as a party store, it reopened in July, renovated and refurbished as a craft beer and wine store that offers 600 beers, some of them from local breweries, and 150 wines.

The craft beers reflect the interests of the new owners, Adam Gottschalk and his wife, Anne-Catherine Dargis. Gottschalk has brewed his own beer for about seven years and was thinking of opening a brewery in Chicago before the Blue Front opportunity came open. He cannot however, by law, sell his own beer in his new store.

Gottschalk says the building was constructed in 1902-1906. It was originally going to be a gas station, but the gas pumps were never put in. In 1927, the Blue Front that generations of residents and students would come to know was opened by Ray Collins.

“At one time it was three stores in one,” says Adam’s father, Ed Gottschalk, whose business is building management, including the apartments above the Blue Front. “One place sold the first bagel in Ann Arbor, another the first copy of the New York Times–eighty newspapers from around the world were for sale there at one time–the third, a cigar store.”

Adam says he’s already had “a few people stop by and describe their weekly visits to the Blue Front. After church, they would stop by, the kids would get twenty-five cents to buy candy and toys, and the parents would pick up the New York Times and bagels for an early dinner.”

A note of regret is obvious when he mentions missing out on a recent eBay listing for a 1930s matchbook whose cover reads:

Blue Front

Cigar Store

State & Packard

Ann Arbor, Mich.

And on the back cover:

Blue Front

Cigar Store

Ray Collins, Proprietor

Then and Now … in a 1930’s matchbook on e-Bay.