A Quick visit to the Old Josie’s Store on West 8th Ave

A Quick Visit to the Old Josie’s Store on West 8th Ave in Conshohocken

By Brian Coll

4/16/2021

To say I smelled Josie’s when I walked in the door for the first time in decades would be a lie. The building has been a hairdresser for years and years now and the air honestly smelled more like cleaning products than any hint of a candy store or even the more recent hairdresser. However, my mind did drift back to my younger days when I would walk into Josie’s candy store with 15 cents feeling like the Forrest Street King. It wasn’t a big place and I think as an adult I could cross the whole room in about three steps, however as a kid it felt like the kind of place you could get lost in for a half hour. In the few minutes I was there my mind flashed back to tearing open baseball card packs, I didn’t care about the latest rookie card that could actually be worth something today, I was looking for Rose, Schmidt, Bowa, Trillo, Carlton, McGraw, Luzinski, Maddox, McBride, Boone… give me the PHILLIES! While I couldn’t smell the old candy store, my other senses perked up when I thought about the penny candy (real candy for a real penny, not a quarter pound of candy for $3.83) the 10 year old in me thought about the old school glass soda bottles, real soda brands, not the canned A-Treat swill that you got after a Conshy Little League Baseball game, but real Coke, real 7-Up.

Real quick side bar, if you are reading this before 10:00 am on Saturday April 17th, 2021, Conshohocken Baseball & Softball League is having it’s opening day at Sutcliffe Park. You can show up and cheer some kids on as they take the field for the opening day ceremonies or stick around for a game.

Back to Josie’s… as I stood there for all of the 10 seconds I had there, my mind went down the isles of this tiny little place, and yet it was so damn big to me. Need a roll of toilet paper, she had it, matches to go start a fire at the silt basin, yup Josie’s had it. There were actual household staples on some of the shelves, this was after all, your old school neighborhood corner store that wasn’t actually on a corner, but most days, all I cared about was the candy. As an adult, my teeth can’t handle those Mary Jane candy things, back then I destroyed them. I’m still addicted to Reese’s cups…. my sister Jackie and our best friend Tim will occasionally joke about a class action suit to help pay for all of our dental bills. We could probably recruit the whole neighborhood to join us.

What I really wanted to see, but it was long gone, was the path where Josie would scoot along in her wheelchair to help us. I imagine under the newer floor (that is already old at this point) was a well worn path through her place of business. You know what caught me by surprise, was her living quarters, right behind the shop area. I remember as a kid, if you knew her well enough… that on Halloween night you could go to the back door down the little alley and get a full size candy bar, FULL SIZE CANDY BAR! I couldn’t afford a full size anything, but each year on Halloween she would give out a few to those of us lucky enough to brave the non lit path back to her back door. I don’t know if there was any candy bar left by the time I got back to the front of the building.

I saw a staircase leading to the basement, so I just wandered down, not sure what I would find, then I saw this.

I think before I walked back up west 8th ave, this piece of old shelving that may have been the only remnants of Josie’s store were gone. A crew was there cleaning the place out so someone else could start a business or maybe convert it back into a residence after years of being a hair salon. For more than 20 years it had been Ciccarella Hair Stylists, I’m sure people miss that place, but not the way the kids who grew up in the old neighborhood will miss and remember Josie’s.

We’d love to hear your memories in the Facebook comments. If you have any photos we would love to see them. Josie was a little camera shy with my dad Jack over the years. We would love to find some photos and share them with other “kids” now who have to be in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s who knew Josie. Thanks for reading.