Eudora Welty's The Little Store

In their essays, “The Little Store” and “Once More to the Lake”, Eudora Welty and E. B. White reveal how certain people and places leave an indelible mark on their persons during childhood. The lake and the store are different in terms of place, time, and people; however, they are the same in terms of indelibility.
Both authors chronicle the enchantments of youth as they reflect on the innocence of their childhood experiences. For Welty, hers is The Little Store:
“Enchantment is cast upon you by all those things you weren’t supposed to have need for, it lures you close to wooden tops you’d outgrown, boy’s marbles and agates in little net pouches, small rubber balls that wouldn’t bounce straight, frazzly kitestring, clay bubble-pipes that would snap off in your teeth, the stiffest scissors.” (Welty 150)
The charm of the store is revealed in its treasure-trove of

trinkets. Although her mother has sent Welty on an errand for an urgent need, these things provide fun and frivolity and are not thought to be necessary items. While her mother considers the errand to be a task, Welty is thrilled with the opportunity for an enchanting escape. The reader is enticed to experience the store through her description of it. It is in her description that one may find themselves strolling through a similar place from their own childhood. Likewise, White is enchanted by his vacations at the lake. He is fascinated by the fact that it is unchanging in its enchantment. He writes, “This seemed an utterly enchanted sea, this lake you could leave to its own devices for a few hours and come back to, and find that it had not stirred, this constant and trustworthy body of water.” (White) Together, these normally common locations hold magical qualities. A neighborhood store--a placid lake in the woods, become enchanting destinations alike.
It is with much anticipation that the authors await their next trip. The lake is a summer destination for White and his family: “We returned summer after summer – always on August 1st for one month” (White). Although there are eleven long months between each adventure, he is richly rewarded for his patience. Conversely, the delay is not as lengthy for Welty and comes more often. She simply has to wait until her mother calls on her to run an errand. Welty remembers, “But if she should, all of a sudden, need another lemon or find she was out of bread, all she had to do was call out, ‘Quick! Who’d like to run to the Little Store for me?’” (Welty 147) They are secure in the knowledge of the next trip. It has become a constant in their lives.
White’s “Once More to the Lake” and Welty’s “The Little Store” utilize expressive language to transport the reader into their stories. Welty goes into a comprehensive description of the store: “There were almost tangible smells – licorice recently sucked in a child’s cheek, dill-pickle brine that had leaked through a paper sack in a fresh trail across the wooden floor …” (Welty 149). The two authors depend on their memories of scents, sounds and color to continue to draw their audience deeper into their worlds of enchantment. When reminiscing about the boats on the lake, White details, “In the daytime, in the hot mornings, these motors made a petulant, irritable sound; at night, in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water, they whined about one’s ears like mosquitoes.” (White) The reader is quickly transported in time and the feeling of enchantment is palpable.
The two storywriters recognize their special place, the lake and the store, as social hubs. The lake is the very center of most of the daily activities of camp life: “There were cottages sprinkled around the shores, and it was in the farming although the shores of the lake were quite heavily wooded. Some of the cottages were owned by nearby farmers, and you would live at the shore and eat your meals at the farmhouse. That’s what our family did.” (White) All of camp life is centered about the lake. Even the locals mingled with the visitors. Similarly, Welty describes both the journey to the store, as well as the store itself as the epicenter of her little world. The sidewalks, buildings, and people are all part of the Little Store experience. It is in these trips that she gains the details of life in her small world. Welty reminisces,
“We weren’t sent to the neighborhood grocery for facts of life, or death. But of course those are what we were on the track of, anyway. With the loaf of bread and the Cracker Jack prize, I was bringing home the intimations of pride and disgrace, and rumors and early news of people coming to hurt one another, while others practiced for joy – storing up a portion for myself of the human mystery.” (Welty 153)
The shopping task was simply the conduit by which community gossip and information was gained.
Although White shares his story from the point of view of an adult, he finds himself blurring the lines of reality in an almost dual existence.

Throughout his story, he compares himself to both his father as well as his son. He explains, “I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore by simple transposition, that I was my father.” (White) Struggling, he discovers that he is not always certain if he is experiencing the moment in the past or present. On the other hand, “The Little Store”, is primarily written from the viewpoint of Welty as a child. Interestingly, the childlike viewpoint is all written in past tense, as a memory. However, toward the end of the story, Welty abruptly changes tense when remembering a poignant encounter with the familiar Monkey Man: “Sometimes you heard him as close as the next street, and then he didn’t come up yours. But now I saw the Monkey Man at the Little Store, where I’d never seen him before.” (Welty 152) It is at this moment when, Welty no longer sees the Monkey Man through the innocent eyes of a child, but through the knowing eyes of an

adult.
Welty’s narrative is ripe with a cast of distinct characters. There are neighborhood children, grocery vendors, her mother, the Monkey Man and even the grade school principal makes an appearance. It is Mr. Sessions, the storekeeper of the Little Store, who is featured most prominently in her memories. Again, Welty utilizes the senses in evoking her thoughtful memory of him. She recalls, “Mr. Sessions, whose hands were gentle and smelled of carbolic, would lift you up and set your feet on the platform, hold your loaf of bread for you, and taking his time while you stood still for him, he would make certain of what you weighed today.” (Welty 151) On the contrary, White never mentions any other characters by name. His narrative is strictly about himself, his father and his son.
From the beginning, when Welty first tells of her mother’s request for someone to run to the Little Store for her, the account is written in chronological order. Step-by-step, she depicts how she winds her way through the neighborhood and to the store. Welty then goes into a description of each event once inside the store. The store itself presents itself in a maze-like configuration and Welty guides the reader through each next twist and turn. She explains, “Then through the motes of cracker dust, cornmeal dust, the Gold Dust of the Gold Dust Twins that the floor had been swept out with, the realities emerged.” (Welty 149) In contrast, White does not allow time to constrain his memories. This allows him the freedom to reach into his past at any time and enhance his telling of present events. It is these memories of his past which motivate him to take the trip back to the lake with his son. When he and his son go fishing, he struggles to remain in the present and not get lost in the past. He contends, “There had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one—the one that was part of memory. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod I was at the end of.” (White) He constantly drifts from the present to the past and back to the present once again, besieged with the realities of time.
After rediscovering their childhood memories, both authors have epiphanies. White finds himself in both the character of his father and that of his son. It’s as if he’s caught in the middle of the two characters, and not ever really himself. He relates to his son’s experience through memories of his own days of adolescence spent at the lake. However, he is also keenly aware that he has become his father, as he introduces the wonderful experiences of the lake to his son. Welty’s epiphany comes in the realization, that as a child, the world is a very small, innocent and protected place. As a child, Welty’s guiltiest memory is perhaps the unkind, if not silly, poem she writes about a boy with influenza. It isn’t until she is older that Welty becomes aware of the secrets that are kept from her for her protection: “The shock to the neighborhood traveled to the children, of course; but I couldn’t find out from my parents what had happened. They held it back from me, as they’d already held back many things, ‘until the time comes for you to know.’” (Welty 153) Having the wisdom that comes only with years, both writers now relive their childhood with the hindsight of an adult.
Regardless of the similarities and differences of their experiences, together Welty and White beautifully illustrate how childhood experiences leave an indelible mark, which form a person’s perception of the world.