These are really bad times and a rough economy so I'm going to ask you two things in this column: Have you hugged your favorite grocery store lately? Have you brought your smiling and appreciative services to the U.S. Postal Service (snail mail) recently?

As a former resident of the "Happy Days" era, I've been on the receiving end of services in "the day" when employees of grocery stores and the post office were considered pretty much set for life. It was a time when there were stamps for your grocery booklets that you earned by buying groceries and the mail carriers were friendly people who arrived at your home about the same time every day except Sunday.

I'm glad to have lived in Streator as a young person at a time when a neighborhood grocery store had its own personality. In "the day" Marx's grocery store was one of those mainstays. I can remember being able to phone them with a list of your needs and having that list ready when you came to pick up your groceries.

Of course, it might not be the brand of ketchup or the exact slice or chunk of meat that you'd imagined, but that was a small price to pay so you didn't have to take the time to shop for the goods yourself.

Neighborhood grocery stores even had a billing system so you could get your groceries and they'd put it on your paper account and on pay day you could go down and settle the account and get ready to buy new groceries.

And when a snowstorm was expected for our small community I can remember how people would head for their nearest grocery store and buy staples, always headed by bread and milk. Once I got off work too late and had to settle for one loaf of bread and one jug of milk. Other grocery baskets had everything from packages of bread mix to dried milk. I guess they expected a really big storm.

Stamps are a staple of my life since I cling desperately to snail mail. I don't like to do money things on the Internet since every other person in our universe seems to be a potential hacker or ID thief. In reality, I'm not savvy enough with my computer to be able to do such maneuvers.

Post offices have always been very important in my life. Friendly workers and great service are always important.

Streator has been blessed to have good postal service with mail carriers for the city proper and rural areas. I'm sure it is the same in Ottawa, La Salle-Peru, etc.

When I lived for six months in El Paso, Ill., before moving to Phoenix, I was lucky enough to have a 24-7 IGA supermarket for groceries and a nice little post office with a female post master. She taught me a lot about buying stamps.

The IGA staff was friendly and I often stopped en route to Streator from Bloomington-Normal for my then-GTE and Illinois State University events jobs and also when securing my bachelor's degree in mass communications at ISU.

Now I'm in the metropolitan area of Phoenix, but I still live as though I'm in a small community.

I have my favorite grocery store, Basha's (Arizona family-owned food store chain which filed Chapter 11) at Seventh Street and Missouri, about 2 miles from our downtown condo, and my post office which now shares its building with Arizona State University's downtown campus, about two blocks round trip on foot.

Again, have you hugged your favorite grocery store or given a friendly hello to your postal service lately?

• SUZANNE (LEONARD) KOVALCIK was born and raised in Streator and now lives in Arizona. She can be reached through The Times by e-mailing paulc@mywebtimes.com.