It was a store with the local economy in mind. The Pay ‘N Save Grocery was ahead of its time, or perhaps just a vestige of days gone by in trading local products for canned and dry goods.
Clarence Moss ran the store on North Broadway in Riverton, across from Kusel’s until 1981, but his story dates back over four decades.
Harry Moss and his wife Tillie moved to Riverton on July 1, 1939. The Moss family had three sons, Clarence, Donald and John.
Harry went into business with his brother Ben, opening the Pay ‘N Save Grocery at 416 East Main Street in Riverton, the present location of 307 Financial Services. The brothers remained partners until 1945.
Harry ran the produce and dry goods in the store and Ben managed the meat market.
Riverton was a boom town after the discovery of uranium in the Gas Hills. Grocery stores were opening all around Fremont County after the end of the Second World War and Riverton grew from a sleepy little agricultural town to an energy Mecca in just a few years.
In 1946 Ben opened a grocery store of his own, Ben’s Supermarket, on West Main Street. He added another store on North Federal and a third in Lander.
Harry built the store on North Broadway the same year, then built an addition on the south side of the building that Merrill Ainsworth opened as a sporting goods store.
The business thrived with town people and rural customers keeping the store busy, especially on Saturdays.
Harry fell into ill health and passed away in 1960 after suffering a heart attack.
Clarence graduated from Riverton High School in 1955, then attended the University of Wyoming, earning an accounting degree in 1959. He went to work for an oil company in Casper, but soon returned home.
“I was working for Chevron Gasoline in Casper, when my dad had the heart attack, they told me about it and I asked to go and see how he was doing. They let me go, and that was the last I heard about the old gas company,” Clarence said.
As their father’s health deteriorated, Don came home from college to run the store, interrupting his academic career. Clarence returned to run the store so Don could graduate from college.
In 1961, Ainsworth went out of business and Barney Hartman opened Hartman’s Sporting Goods at the site.
Don graduated with a teaching degree and moved to Goshen County where he taught at Veteran, Yoder, Ft. Laramie and finally Torrington and went into agriculture, running a hog farm.
Clarence intended to stay in Riverton just one year, but life changed his plans, and he ran Pay ‘N Save for 21 years.
“I always figured my brother Don was going to come into the store business with me. We always talked about the remodeling we’d do at the store when we took over,” Clarence said. “Dad wanted both of us boys to get a college education. I did, but dad passed away, Donald had two years to go. I worked alone until he graduated. He took a job as a teacher. He never did come back into business with me.”
In a 1981 interview, Clarence reflected on leaving the family business.
“I want to try something different,” he said. “You don’t put 21 years into something and leave it lightly.”
Doing something different is often a challenge, and something not to be taken likely in a family-owned business.
“We took in corn in season,” Clarence said.
While they welcomed the local corn, they offered their own early version of a “Farmer’s Market” with Tillie.
“People came out to the house and brought cream from my mother. We had five milk cows. We separated the milk, people came out to buy cream,” Clarence said. “We had two jerseys, two Guernsey’s, and a Brown Swiss. My brother milked two, I milked two, but that Brown Swiss was a mean cow the only that could milk her was my father.”
A popular feature of Pay ‘N Save was the meat counter. Clarence offered lean, low-fat hamburger before it became popular.
“Our best feature was probably our meat market, we had a meat cutter that was very popular with the public, they’d come in for specialty cuts of meat from him,” Clarence said.
One commented as the store was closing, “Nobody had greaseless hamburger like you had.”
The meat case featured hamburger, roasts and steaks displayed in a chilled, glass lined case. Customers just pointed to the cut they wanted and the Pay ‘N Save butcher weighed and wrapped it for them.
The butcher that made this meat counter such a popular place was Ray Florence. Ray, who grew up in Greybull, went to work for Harry in 1956 and stayed for a quarter of a century.
“You can’t operate without a good butcher,” Clarence said. “Several men worked for me, helping out in the meat market mainly, because Ray was getting swamped. I always seemed to have plenty of people who wanted to work, it worked out pretty well that way.”
Ray kept the meat counter hoping, but in later years he began to cut his hours, entering semi-retirement while working just two days a week.
“We had frozen foods, produce and canned goods, we were a regular small time grocery store,” Clarence said.
Clarence supplied his store from Associated Food Stores in Billings. Milk came from Cream of Weber in Riverton and was delivered daily. Sweetheart Bread also arrived daily on a truck from Billings.
“The salespeople took orders and delivered bread daily,” Clarence said. “We had a good flow of customers, getting things off the shelf. We stocked every day.”
Steady customers are the lifeline of a small, independent grocery store. If produce, milk or bread stays on the shelf too long it must be thrown out. That was never a problem at Pay ‘N Save.
“We wanted to keep products fresh, and the customers came in,” Clarence said. “I didn’t have to worry about the milk or bread, it took care of themselves.”
When the store closed in 1981, it lost three quality workers in Grace Davenport, Myrtle Parker and Betty Brow. Grace and Myrtle worked for 11 and 10 years respectively, while Betty was only at the store for a couple of years, but she made an impact.
“I wished I’d had her working here years ago,” Clarence said as the store closed.
The longest-term worker at Pay ‘N Save was Tillie. She remained at the store after her husband passed away in 1960 and worked beside her son Clarence for 21 more years.
Tillie helped close the store each night at 7 p.m.
“Mom wanted something to do, she’d come down to the store and work a couple of hours a day,” Clarence said.
Tillie suffered from dementia later in life and passed away in 1994.
The later closing time gave working families ample time to shop for groceries after the more common 5 pm workday ended.
Competition in the grocery business was fierce in Riverton until the 1980s. Safeway was an established national franchise and Woodward’s IGA was a Fremont County icon, opening in 1966 in Riverton. Ben Moss operated a pair of Ben’s Grocery Stores as well.
K-Mart arrived with a competing line of canned and dry goods, and to add to the challenge, uranium collapsed after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in March of 1979.
Parking was always a problem for Pay ‘N Save and the other grocery stores located on Main Street except the second Ben’s Supermarket on the top of the hill. Safeway, Woodward’s and the Federal Ben’s Supermarket all offered ample parking for customers.
When Pay ‘N Save closed in 1981, the building was occupied by Hartman’s Sporting goods which expanded from their location next door.
During the heyday of grocery stores in Riverton there were a dozen different locally owned businesses and Safeway.
All those grocery stores eventually fell to Smith’s and Walmart’s, national franchises.
When Clarence was asked how did Riverton support so many grocery stores, he replied “I don’t how they did, but they all seemed to do a good business. When Walmart came in, it pretty much dried up the town.”
Clarence wasn’t quite ready to close the store in 1981 but followed advice from other people.
“Everybody said you’d better get out while the getting’s good. I regret it now, I’m sure I could have stayed in there and done well, even with Walmart,” Clarence said. “I should have never listened to them. That’s what I liked to do, and I should have stayed.”
Clarence moved to California and ran “Containers Etc.” in a new mall that opened near his home in Escondido.
“We had a franchise, selling all kinds of containers, everything you could think of,” Clarence said. “I ran that for 2-3 years, then I sold it.”
He is now retired, living in California.