These little neighborhood grocery stores were once very popular, but in the last 30 years or so, many of these small stores have disappeared, they've closed.
Mel's mother worked side by side with her husband running the family's small grocery store, so Mel grew up accepting women as equals, which was unusual in those days.
Ichiro Akune and his wife Yukiye immigrated to America from Japan in 1918 in search of opportunity, opening a small grocery store in central California and raising nine children.
You would walk maybe four or five blocks down the street and there would be a small grocery store where you could buy things like milk and meat and canned goods.
The Kyrgyz enclave inside of Uzbekistan is home to over 1,000 people, but has no post office, no government buildings, no banks, and the only employment opportunities are at a small general store.