This little piggy sold groceries

I miss Piggly Wiggly.

There are probably better grocery stores around here today, but they don't have better names or histories.

My dad worked at the Piggly Wiggly in Muleshoe for four decades, mostly as its produce manager.

He bought my Fighting Ace action figure from that store's toy isle.

He kept a John Niland-autographed football in the employees-only back room at Piggly Wiggly for at least a week, playing catch in the parking lot with co-workers, before giving it to me for Christmas.

He sometimes left fresh (I assume wrapped) heads of lettuce in the dumpster behind Piggly Wiggly so a local hermit named Josh Blocher could find them when he rummaged through in search of food.

I stumbled on a photo of my dad working at Piggly Wiggly the other day and that made me wonder for the umpteenth time: Why did they call it Piggly Wiggly.

The search for an answer provided other Pigs' trivia that I'm pretty sure everybody needs to know.

• Clarence Saunders founded Piggly Wiggly in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Pigs' website reports his reason for choosing the name is a mystery.

"He was curiously reluctant to explain its origin," the website says.

"One story says that, while riding a train, he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence, which prompted him to think of the rhyme. Someone once asked him why he had chosen such an unusual name for his organization, to which he replied, 'So people will ask that very question.'"

• The odd name is not the store's most significant contribution to society as we know it.

Piggly Wiggly was probably the first self-service grocery store.

"In grocery stores of that time, shoppers presented their orders to clerks who then gathered the goods from the store shelves," the website says.

"Saunders, a dynamic and innovative man, noticed that this method resulted in wasted time and expense, so he came up with an unheard-of solution that would revolutionize the entire grocery industry: he developed a way for shoppers to serve themselves."

The first Pigs "was unlike any other contemporary grocery store. There were shopping baskets, open shelves, and no clerks to shop for the customer - all of which were previously unheard of!"

According to its website, Piggly Wiggly was also the first to:

Provide checkout stands ... Price mark every item in the store ... Use refrigerated cases to keep produce fresher longer ... And put employees in uniforms for cleaner, more sanitary food handling.

• In the 1930s, there were more than 2,600 Piggly Wiggly stores scattered across the country.

Most of the small towns in eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle had a Piggly Wiggly at some point. A paid advertisement in the April 25, 1969, State Line Tribune reported Farwell had the "largest and finest super market" in Parmer County.

Fifty years ago this week, Miracle Whip was 49 cents per quart in that store. A "giant box" of Breeze Detergent cost 69 cents. A 10-pound bag of pinto beans: $1.09.

And S&H Green Stamps were always double on Wednesday.

• Piggly Wiggly was in Clovis as early as the 1920s.

S&S Supermarket in Clovis used to be a Piggly Wiggly.

The S&S website reports: "Our store has been in operation since the 1960s when it was known as the local Piggly Wiggly. It remained the Piggly Wiggly until 1982 when it was bought by Glen Spell and Carol Hatter. Glen and Carol then rebranded the store as S&S Supermarket ..."

Pigs began to fade away in the early 1980s and in 1982 it was acquired by the wholesale grocer Malone & Hyde. In 1988, Malone & Hyde was acquired by Fleming Companies, which filed for bankruptcy in 2003.

Pigs' website tells us today there are more than 530 independently owned Piggly Wiggly stores in 17 states, but none in Texas or New Mexico.

The closest is in Muldrow, Oklahoma, near the Arkansas line, if anyone is up for a road trip. The lady who answered the phone there on Friday said a quart of Miracle Whip goes for $3.99.

David Stevens writes about regional history for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]

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