Blasterz found themselves in Lebanon KS with no fast-food to be found at lunchtime. We were alsio needing some Geographic Center postcards for the folks back home.
Blasterz are adaptable and fearless picknickers so we buzzed into Ladow's Market and scrounged ourselves a yummy non-cook peel & pull-tab picnic from the offerings. We had a fine feast of cheese sticks, saltine crackers, Vienna sausages, sardines, Louisiana hot sauce, apples, bananas, and Diet Dr Peppers -- with homemade-from-in-town cherry pie rolls for dessert!!! :)
We also bought about a dozen postcards for our buddies.
Our purchases all had old-fashioned purple-ink paper price tags on them. The store owner rang up our items on a 1960s-vintage cash register that printed out an adding-machine style receipt. Mama and Daddy Blaster remembered when all grocery store receipts looked ike this, but Younger Blasters had never seen these kinds of register tapes before.
Ladow's was crammed full with all kinds of merchandise -- food, hardware, tourist stuff, sewing stuff, small tools, cleaning supplies, motor oil -- you name it!
There was a lot of selection at Ladow's, but not a lot of stock: They had lots of single items, and much of that stuff was a little dusty. Not a big deal whrn you are talking snow shovels or hammers, but a little off-putting when it comes to groceries.
Blasterz stuck to the dust-free edible stuff, like the potted meats. Ladow's stocks several flavors of Spam, and also Spam-variants made by Armour, Libbey, and Shur-fine. Multiple cans of each brand and each variety tells Blasterz that there is high demand for wach of these varieties in town.
Best-sellers: pie fillings (all flavors, apparently), applesauce (4 varieties) tuna, canned beef stew, boxed mac and cheese, canned tomatoes and standard vegetables, and of course the condensed and cream soups -- lots of cans or boxes of each of these items, all free of dust.
Not so best-sellers: Canned green chile stew with pork, sardines, some seasonal spices, and barbecue sauces.
Blasterz get the impression that Ladow's Market is very receptive to carrying what their customers tell them they want, even if that means 2 feet of shelf space for Spams, 3 kinds of jellies (strawberry, grape, and peach) and 2 kinds of salad dressings (Ranch and Italian).
With the exception of Spam, JIF peanut butter, and Chicken of the Sea tuna (a few cans), there are few national brands here. Most of the offerings carry the Shur-fine store-brand label.
Blasterz were a little surprised that Ladow's didn't carry genuine Tabasco sauce, but were happy to buy the Shur-fine Crystal-style Louisiana hot sauce. It was close enough to real Crystal to bring home with us :)
Not surprisingly for this small town, the store does not have a website of its own. It DOES have an answering machine if you need to call them.
Here is all we could discover on the Internet about Ladow's: (
visit link)
Hours:
Monday-Saturday -- 7:30am-5:30pm
Sunday -- closed