But for older residents who remember Willow Glen's multiple "mom and pop" stores, shopping today feels too impersonal.

"You don't have this feeling like, 'I want to dash down to Safeway to see how what's her name's doing and how the kids are doing,' " Eleanor Greig, 85, says.

Greig's family owned one of the last mom and pop grocery stores in Willow Glen--Lincoln Glen Market. It closed in 1968. The Greigs operated the market at a time when many small shops flourished in the growing community. Lincoln Lane, Arnone's, Maynard's and the Food Basket all served small pockets of Willow Glen. Customers came into these stores daily, often on foot, looking for milk, bread and conversation.

Greig's son, lifelong Willow Glen resident David Wood, says the family store opened on the corner of Lincoln and Curtner avenues in the early 1930s. A Shell gas station is on the site now. The stucco building had a decorative tile border and a flat roof.

Wood moved to Curtner Avenue in 1955 with his mother, stepfather James "Sid" Greig, older sister Kathy, and younger sisters Cecile and Vicki.

Although the family lived in Willow Glen, its first store was located in San Martin. Greig's father sold his chicken farm to buy the store and asked Wood's mother and stepfather to run the store. In the fifth grade, Wood himself began working in the family business.

In San Martin, Wood learned to bag groceries and check out customers. He also carried 50-pound sacks of rice, flour, beans and potatoes for migrant workers and large families who would buy goods in bulk.

However, the commute was tough on the family, Wood says, and so his parents jumped at the opportunity to purchase Lincoln Glen Market from Leonard Shay in 1958. They sold their San Martin store to an employee.

With the Greigs at the helm, Lincoln Glen Market became a whole-family affair. Sid Greig ran the market; Eleanor Greig's father, Marion "Doc" Barrow, used his charm as a clerk; Eleanor Greig's mother, Rive Barrow, did the books. Wood came in each morning at 7:30 a.m. to work for an hour before slipping through a hole in the fence to attend Lincoln Glen Elementary School, now the Willows Senior Center.

Greig made her way into the store around 2 p.m., when one of her younger daughters got out of grammar school and did her homework in the store's office. Then her oldest daughter, Kathy, came to the store to pick up goods for dinner, took her younger sister home and cooked for the family.

"It was a real nice set-up," Greig says.

The store was large enough to offer a variety of goods, including produce, canned goods and fresh meat. Yet it was small enough to get to know the customers by name and form relationships in the community. The store even issued credit to customers now and then, signing the back of their receipt and filing it away alphabetically.

"So many customers had kids going to school with mine, and we were really well acquainted," Greig says.

The store succeeded because it had sufficient parking for customers as well as a popular butcher, Ralph Prickett, Wood says. Prickett worked there with his son and began smoking meats and making jerky for hunters. Prickett eventually opened Ralph's Custom Smokehouse on Delmas Avenue, now Willow Glen Meats and Smokehouse.

For Wood, working at the store through his middle and high school years was his contribution to the family. He would spent his mornings selling cigarettes and Lifesavers to businessmen who dropped in before work, while other boys his age spent their years shooting marbles, riding bicycles, and playing baseball and basketball. As a young boy he even sold cigarettes to firemen he later worked with after joining the San Jose Fire Department.

"Oh, the girls just loved him, and the mothers loved him," Greig says. "He was such a nice kid and good-looking."

Wood says his time working at Lincoln Glen Market was a learning experience. He learned responsibility and worked for things he wanted, such as a pair of shoes from the former Bergmann's Department Store on Lincoln Avenue.

Wood also says the experience brought him closer to the community.

"I met a lot of people in the store who were my neighbors and who are still my neighbors," he says.

One neighbor he recalls was Willow Glen resident and San Jose city historian Clyde Arbuckle. Arbuckle worked at the now-defunct museum at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds. Arbuckle came into the market often to buy cat food for the cats living on the fairgrounds.

In the 1960s, however, things changed. Curtner Avenue widened, absorbing some of Lincoln Glen Market's parking.

A Safeway opened on Curtner Avenue. Prickett left the store and revenue began to decline. Then a car crashed into the market, leaving the store under repair for six weeks.

"Business went down after the accident," Greig says. "We never really did recover our income after the construction was finished."

So in 1968, with Shell interested in the corner, the Greigs decided to sell. Wood, now 58, went on to work for the San Jose Fire Department. He retired in 1998.

Those days of familiar mom and pop grocery stores are now nothing more than memories for Greig and her son. Yet she remembers her small store fondly.

"I missed the social end of it when we sold the store," Greig says. "That was a very pleasant time in our lives."