Egg Candeling the cure for common Shop lifting

 

 

Egg Candeling the cure for common Shop lifting

 

Excerpt from Remembrances of Rosabelle Larsen Schneider by Dallas Max Schneider

When Rose was about 16 or 17 she went to work for a small local grocery store simply called, "Allen's", located on the main street of Hyrum.  They paid her about 10 dollars a week for 60 hours of work. 

There were no adding machines at that time and things were added on the spot in the clerks mind with pencil and paper.  Mother told me she could add a column of figures so fast that no one would believe her sum and would painstakingly take a long time to recheck her figures.  The owners, recognizing her gift for numbers told her to deliberately take more time even though she knew the answer so that the slower customers would not think she was incorrect because of her speed.

Money  was always scarce and many times eggs were used as bartering items.  The eggs had to be candled to see that the egg was a good egg.  Bad eggs had blood clots or half formed chick embryos inside of them. 

The method for determining good eggs was called, "Candling".  A clerk would take the eggs to be bartered into a dark room and hold the egg up to a strong focused light.  The light would make the egg transparent and could be examined quickly to see if it was fit for transforming into money or other items like sugar or flour.  I guess this is where the term came from when referring to boorish behavior of people, "He's a bad egg!".

When Rose was alone in the store and had to go into the dark room to candle eggs, she had a little hole that she could see out of and look at what the customer was doing.  Sometimes the customer succumbed to the temptation that no one was looking and would slip some small item in their pockets or purse.  She could usually see what it was that was thought to be secretly purloined and would add it to the list of things the customer had bought. 

When the customer would protest, gentle Rose would quietly give them a graceful excuse out of their thievery by saying, "Oh, that can of baking powder is in your pursue.  You just forgot to put it with the rest of your purchases".  Then they would without a word pay for the stolen goods and get out of the market as soon as possible. They were highly embarrassed that they had been stealing. 

Not many people did that but enough did so Rose would always take a peek out of her secret looking hole.  People today steal much from our supermarkets and go to elaborate schemes to take items that are never paid for.