No, it’s not the Brown Ice Cream butter box, although that’s a fragile beauty as well.

It’s not the Scowcroft Red Diamond Peanut Butter jar. He fills that with marbles because it looks cool that way.

It’s not even the Washington Market lard can, the only one of those in the whole world that he knows of.

No, his treasure is a toy wooden whistle the size of a butane cigarette lighter that says “Albert Coop” on the side.

Albert Coop was a local Ogden grocery store in the 1930s to the 1950s. It had several locations and gave those whistles to boys and girls who were well-behaved when they came in.

Few giveaway toys survive the trip home, let alone 75 years. Rusch found this one because he spends a lot of time digging through yard sales, thrift stores, antique shops and Internet sale sites looking for the detritus of Ogden’s dozens and dozens of corner grocery stores.

Back before Piggly Wiggly invented the self-serve market, and back before Stimson’s opened the city’s first “super” market, Ogden residents bought their groceries from nearly 100 independent, locally owned grocery stores almost always within walking distance.

The owner lived upstairs or right behind and no doubt worried about the steady leakage of apples and gum to the neighborhood youngsters. Hence the whistles: Bribes to keep the stock from shrinking.

Rusch’s interest began as a child shopping with his grandmother. They’d drive to whichever supermarket was nearest and she’d talk about the tiny groceries they passed, now converted to homes or small businesses.

“Plus my parents have always been collectors, and I just have an interest in history,” he said.

History is many bits and pieces which, like that whistle, are seen as junk by non-historians. Rusch wishes, when people find their grandmother’s collection of old grocery receipts, they’d throw them at him instead of away.

“That’s what I was telling my dad,” he said. “What would they think if they saw us archiving their receipts and things?”

Receipts are often all that’s left, although many of the buildings are still standing. He’s got one from the Red & White grocery at 102 22nd St. (now an upholstery shop,) and one from Wilson Brothers, which was where American Nutrition’s dog food plant is now.

At a thrift store, Rusch found an entire bound edition of the Washington Terrace News, a weekly published in Washington Terrace in the early 1950s. It still has the $3 price tag Rusch paid for it.

Ads show Stimson’s Market selling four rolls of toilet paper for 27 cents, 15 cans of dog food for $1, eight cans of corn for $1, cans of corned beef for 47 cents and eggs at 49 cents a dozen. Ten pounds of potatoes cost 23 cents.

Sounds cheap, but groceries were a larger percentage of household expenses in the 1950s, when the average wage was $3,139 a year, or $8.60 a day. At those prices, a day’s wages would be easy to spend.

Rusch has found that local grocery stores sold mostly local products.

He displayed a variety of boxes and bottles. One small box once held a Shupe-Williams chocolate cherry nut ball. It was made in the massive factory located on Wall Avenue and 26th Street. The vacant building burned down several years ago.

He has a tin of Blue Pine sage, the Red Diamond peanut butter, Kitchen King cocoa, Blue Pine Pork and Beans and Blue Pine extracts. All were made by Ogden’s John Scowcroft & Sons, wholesale grocers and dry goods.

The Weber County’s Statehood Centennial history says the Scowcroft company was one of five clothing manufacturers in Ogden in 1929. Weber County had several local bottlers of soda, four wholesale bakeries and 13 canneries.

What happened to corner markets?

Piggly Wiggly happened with the idea of “self service,” where the customer walked in, took items off the shelf, took it to the counter and paid.

In 1931, there were three in Ogden. A 1922 ad in the Standard-Examiner touts the benefits of Piggly Wiggly’s new system.

“You are not asked to buy a lot of things you don’t need and don’t want. You walk through the aisles, select just what you want, the hanging price tag tells you the cost, you pay cash and take your purchases with you.”

It was revolutionary and let Piggly Wiggly offer more selection and lower prices.

In 1937, the Humpty Dumpty grocery store in Oklahoma City introduced the shopping cart so people could pick even more stuff off the shelf. Then people drove cars to the store to haul all that stuff home, and the modern super market was born.

The corner store couldn’t compete.

• Charles F. Trentelman writes for the Standard-Examiner.