Autumn Years Spring 2023

Inside Packard’s, c.1973.

Packard Bamberger store, c.1940s.

Packard’s closed in 1991 after 58 years of business. The massive building then became a flea market with mul tiple stalls. In 2001, the building was torn down, and a Target was opened on the site. Like Packard’s, Target sells a large variety of items and has a grocery department.

According to inter action on the Facebook site Vintage Bergen County , Packard’s is the most remembered of the old Bergen County super markets. Favorite recollec

store in Hackensack that was never built. On December 17, 1937, the Guarantee Company, a regional north Jersey gro cery brand, opened its newest store on Main Street in Hackensack. A sign over the front door of the new 11,000-square foot building declared the new desig nation “Super Market.” (This building later became the Sears auto repair center and still stands today north of the now closed main Sears building.) A year later, in 1938, A&P (now following the self-ser vice model) opened a new supermarket next door to the Guarantee supermarket. Notably, the advertisement for the open ing of A&P showed a photo of the newly invented shopping cart. (Today, an Aldi grocery store is on that site.) Acme, a chain with six current loca tions in Bergen County, opened its first store in an old Hackensack bus garage in 1937. The 84,000-square-foot store had a staff of 15 butcher men, 14 vegetable men and 14 floor men. And there were 6 dairy

tions include the creaky wooden floors covered by sawdust in the deli and meat departments; the S&H green stamps redemption center; and hotdogs from the snack bar in poppy-seed buns that were baked onsite. Kathleen Shouldis, who worked there during high school and college, recalls this about working at the snack bar: “We made sandwiches from scratch and wrapped them in cel lophane that we sealed with a hand iron. Packard’s was a magical place!” Packard’s ancient escalator is well remembered, especially by Dorothy Johansen. While shopping one day in 1960, Dorothy—who was nine months pregnant with her second child—was on the escalator riding down. She was behind a woman with a baby carriage, which got stuck at the point of exit. The escalator kept moving, which resulted in Dorothy being thrown over the woman and the carriage! Dorothy gave birth the next day to a healthy baby boy.

WELCOME TO THE SUPERMARKET

search of the Library of Congress newspaper ar chives reveals that the

first use of the term “supermarket” in conjunction with the selling of food occurred in 1921. Originally “super market”—with “super” as an adjec tive to “market”—it quickly became the common closed compound word, “supermarket.” The first known use of “supermarket” in Bergen County appeared in The Record newspaper on October 22, 1932, concerning a planned

clerks, 3 of whom were allowed to be women. The store had 6 register operators, and all had to be men.

56 AUTUMN YEARS I SPRING 2023