Autumn Ponderings on Fruit and Vegetables

When I was a child I often accompanied my mother on trips to the green grocer. His name was Hop (possibly Hop Ngan Kee, but I need to consult on that) and he always greeted her as a friend. and I think she viewed him the same way. He had a shop in Guyton Street, just off the avenue - the photo below shows Victoria Avenue in the mid-fifties, and very much as I recall the shops in Wanganui looking well into the sixties. Mum never chose her fruits and vegetables herself. She told Hop her needs and he carefully selected for her from boxes labelled as 'choice eating' or 'best fresh' and similar phrases. She totally trusted that the quality would be unfailingly excellent. Hop would later deliver the week's shop to the house.

I think one of the charms of living in Petone is that it often sparks memories of times gone. The quirky old houses, the Jackson Street shops - all reminders of it's proud, working-class history, which in turn take me back to my own childhood. I remember once asking my mother if we could buy some walnuts from a shop in the avenue and it was explained to me that only Hop would do, and failing that only the Chinese could be trusted to really know and retail quality in fruit and vegetables. Today I called into just such a shop in Petone. Near the Bolton Street corner is an old fashioned chinese green grocer. The quality is superb and the prices reasonable. He can be relied upon to have a small box of avocados just at the peak of perfection for immediate use - not a veritable mountain of rock hard ones or stack of near molten ones such as the supermarkets specialise in. But the best buy today was a big bag of feijoas for $3. Is there a more glorious autumn fruit? I think not!