Back in the ’50s, my mom wasn’t much for baking snacks other than cookies. She never bought chips — certainly not Fritos. At our school’s corner lunch stand, a one-ounce sack cost 10¢ ($1.34 today). I’m sure Nebgen’s Red & White stocked them, but I never thought to look. By the ’60s, pouring chili i...

E ach spring, my dad would give gardening another try. He grew vegetables, but asparagus never crossed his mind, though a longtime favorite in Germany. Any asparagus he ate came from a can at Nebgen’s Red & White Grocery. Fresh asparagus, with its short shelf life of three to five days, wasn’t avail...

The sixth edition of the Fredericksburg PTA Cookbook (1948) contained no dip recipes. There was no need for them in the immediate postwar era. A return to the ordinary took time. The Great Depression and World War II had robbed Americans of a quarter century. Millions of sons had gone to war. Now, t...