David and Goliath, chicken feet, sushi and a hug

By Tom Kohler

I call myself a “born-and-stayed Savannahian,” having lived here for 72 of my 74 years. These days, I usually get invited to talk about how things usta be. Now, I’ll admit up front that “usta” is a made-up word. With that said, it’s a great Savannah word.

I was in the Red and White grocery store on Habersham the other day to grab some sushi and say hi to my all-time-favorite-anywhere-in-the-world check out person. I’ve been shopping there ever since my family moved into the Groveland subdivision when I was 5. I’m 74 now. You do the math. If you can’t place Groveland, think south of DeRenne Avenue, west of Kensington Park, north of Habersham Woods.

The Habersham Shopping Center was developed by the Lamara Company starting in 1949, and was part of a larger 30-acre complex that included the Lamara Apartments, the first 3-bedroom apartments in Georgia according to Google AI. Back in the day, the single story, red brick Lamara apartments, nestled between Habersham and Paulson just north of DeRenne, provided safe affordable housing for many families, including quite a few Russian refugee families who emigrated to the USA in the early 1990’s during the Mikhail Gorbachev era.

The apartments are long gone, with Candler Hospital, and other medical facilities sitting on that ground these days. It’s hard to imagine, but there wasn’t much of anything South of Derenne. Oglethorpe Mall was a cow pasture. The “Southside” gradually emerged, thanks in part to businessman-Mayor J. Curtis Lewis, who donated land for the Habersham Street YMCA in the early 1960s and the Mills B. Lane Foundation that donated 250 acres of swampy pine forest to the state of Georgia, enabling Armstrong Junior College to relocate and become a 4-year college, then university and now a subset of Georgia Southern University.

OK,OK,OK, back to the sushi and chicken feet!

Early on, the Red and White was part of the Winn Dixie grocery chain, which originated in 1925 and by 1987 grew to 1,300 stores nationwide. The Winn Dixie brand has faded as other Goliaths like Publix and Kroger emerged and began to dominate the grocery landscape.

The Jones family acquired the Red and White in 1980 and have run it ever since. As an independently owned grocery store, it’s a David, in a world of Goliath-sized corporate chain stores.

With that said, I’ll take Jones’s Red and White any day. Where else can you find sushi and raw chicken feet within 50 feet of each other? Where else will you see well-worn pick up trucks unloading locally grown collard greens? Where else can you suggest a product and then have it show up on the shelves the next time you shop or find the owners of a grocery store actually working in the store, stocking shelves and talking with customers. Where else will you find a grocery store whose employees have worked there for 20 and 30 years?

Savannah usta have more of this.

Smith Brothers (photo) usta be where Chatham Insurance Partners is now, half a block South of the Green Truck, which usta be a Krispy Chic, famous for their Buck Box where you usta get a leg, a thigh, and roll for $1. The Thomas family owned and worked at Smith Brothers, with George Thomas rotating between butchering and bill paying. The Thomas’ lived two doors down from us on Varn Drive and when I was 10 or 11 years old George Thomas did a little Tom Sawyer trick on me and ‘let’ me help him repair the chimney on his flat roofed house. My job was to carry bricks up the ladder while he did the real work. The highlight of the day was when Mr. Thomas smushed his finger and let out a string of cuss words like I’d never heard before. I felt like I’d been let into the fraternity of men that day. Men who sweat, and cuss, and fix things.

Another local family run grocery was M&M. It was not uncommon to see Norton, Betty and Millie Melaver working at the M&M Supermarket on Habersham and Gwinnett back in the day before they expanded regionally and eventually sold out to Kroger. I was bending down to buy a bag of cat food there once in the early 1970s, sporting my newly grown shoulder length hippie hair and beard. An older African American woman came down the aisle with her grocery cart, saw me and started shouting “Jesus, Jesus … Jesus our Lord has returned.” I looked around and seeing no one, realized that I was Jesus. I dropped my bag of cat food and beat a hasty retreat, back to my $50 apartment just up the street at 440 Habersham.

There usta be many more locally owned grocery stores, corner markets and confectionaries throughout Savannah’s neighborhoods. I called my friend Stevie Bryan whose father owned and operated Bryan’s Market at the corner of Harmon and Joe Streets to help me remember some of those spots. When I said “I’m describing these as part of the connective tissue of various neighborhoods” Stevie was quick to say “Many were a lot more than that. Lots of families would have gone hungry without the shop owners extending ‘till payday’ credit. My father’s credit system was low tech genius. The customers’ name on top of a 2-pound brown paper bag, with the date/amount credit was extended and the date/amount it was paid back. No interest ever.”

Someday somebody should write a book about all of this. If that somebody is you, here are a few starting points. Bryan’s Market, Aarons on West Broad, Davids, Bargain Corner, A.B. Futchs L&M Superette, Konters, Food Town, and here are some images to really get you going!

Savannah Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-2015 – Groceteria

About the author

Tom Kohler has lived in Savannah for 72 of his 74 years. He attended our local public schools, Armstrong and the University of Georgia. He was educated at Jim Collins Bar. The founder and longtime coordinator of Chatham Savannah Citizen Advocacy has been involved in creating a variety of civic organizations thru the years including the Jim Collins Bar Alumni Association, Savannah Rocks!, and Emergent Savannah.

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