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The worst soda cases I had to carry were the quarts.
				I&rsquo;m a complainer? Try carrying a dozen quart bottles of anything in an ancient wooden crate that jabs splinters into your hands.
				As a teen, I was the soda roustabout for my family&rsquo;s 1950s store, and it was my job to keep our cooler filled to the brim with colas, fruit flavors, root and birch beer and citrus from our dingy soda storage room. No hand truck or pasteboard cartons in that day and age.
				The goal of all that grunting and groaning was helping my family keep the store going and raise the money for college &#8211; which was cheaper than today, but measured in glass bottles and wooden cases still quite an undertaking.
				Sometimes I wondered who&rsquo;d lugged the cases and had done other work for the store in generations past. Had those young people entertained plans for their future? Whatever had become of them? All I knew about the store once we took it over was that it had apparently existed for a long time.
				Years later I found an old bird&rsquo;s-eye view drawing of Wilkes-Barre showing that nearly my entire neighborhood was there in 1889 and had remained unchanged since.
				I also knew the names of the people from whom my parents had bought the building with its store and three apartments in 1955 &#8211; Ben and Rose Lenovitz, a nice older couple whom I&rsquo;d met just once before we moved in.
				But the history of the building and its occupants was hardly my top priority as I moved through college, teaching, military service, graduate school and journalism. In time, that whole neighborhood was commandeered by federal urban redevelopment and demolished in favor of new projects. By the 1980s, there wasn&rsquo;t even a building to visit and reminisce about.
				Then one day in 2013 I was abruptly pulled back into that forgotten time. A Times Leader article by my friend and colleague Bill O&rsquo;Boyle announced not only that Lillian Lenovitz Cahn, founder of the Coach handbag company, had passed away, but that she had been my predecessor as a youthful employee of the East Market Street store.
				Yes, the older couple from whom my parents had bought the business in 1955 had been her parents, and as a dutiful daughter she had labored in the store in her younger days, just as I had done a generation later. Lillian had even graduated from my old high school, GAR Memorial, about 20 years earlier.
				Probably, some of her teachers also taught me.
				In any case, the Times Leader article pointed out that when Lillian worked in the store one of her duties was using paper tote bags with handles to carry home-made noodles to families that had ordered them. This experience, the article said, gave her the idea for her first leather Coach handbags after she&rsquo;d moved to New York City and married Miles Cahn, who had a small leather goods company.
				During my family&rsquo;s days operating the East Market Street store we found it convenient to live in the apartment overhead. Whether the Lenovitzes had done so too, I&rsquo;ve never figured out from the city directory entries. If they did, then I&rsquo;d also lived in Lillian&rsquo;s old home, which is now lawn next to the Heights Elementary School.
				I&rsquo;m happy with the run I&rsquo;ve had, though I&rsquo;ve never risen to the prominence of the founder of Coach handbags. But one thing is quite clear: there is life after the soda room.

Remember When: Coach founder and I had an old store in common