When I was an elementary school age kid living on Gwynns Island, Virginia, there was a little country store on the Island called "Scrooch's Market." ("Scrooch" was the nickname of the man who owned the store.)
The market was pretty ramshackle looking -- oiled wooden floors and a naked light bulbs hanging by their cords from the ceiling. But it was one of the social hubs of the island, where people would gather not just to get a few groceries but to visit and catch up on the latest gossip.
After school, I used to get off the bus at Scrooch's to get a snack and then walk the rest of the way home.
Way in the back corner of the store, near the glassed-in meat counter, on the bottom shelf of the long display rack that ran the length of the store, was a Hoover Pixie very similar to the one shown above, in the same type of carton. The one in the store was light gray with a dark-blue bag, the same color combination as the first Constellation. The hose and attachments were also the matching "periwinkle blue" color of the Constellation attachments.
Presumably, the owner of Scrooches had gotten the Pixie to use for dusting in the store, but I never saw him use it and the box never budged from that spot. Every time I'd go into the store, I'd go back there and look at it. I had forgotten about that until I saw the photo above.
There was another, larger, more modern market on the Island called Callis Market. It was part of a commercial wharf where oysters and crabs were harvested and processed.
In that market were two sweeper delights! There was a small rest room in the back of the store that doubled as a cleaning closet -- inside were mops, brooms, cleaning compounds, and an Electrolux Model E!! I used to go to that bathroom so often just to see the Model E that the store owner finally asked me one day if there was something wrong with my kidneys!
The other thing in the market was a long, long, extra-long woven cloth Electrolux hose. It was an LX-style hose, dark gray with a bright blue chevron pattern. The hose was always draped across the top and sides of a large commercial-sized deep freezer. The hose was so long that the handle and motor-coupler nearly touched the floor on both sides!
I guess the hose went with the Model E but, again, I never saw them using it and neither the machine nor the hose ever moved from where they were kept.
All these years I have been looking for one of those commercial-length Electrolux cloth hoses but have never found one. (There was also an extra-long XXX hose that I've also never seen, only a reference to one in an old brochure about Electrolux equipment. Another "sweeper holy grail" to hopefully be found someday.)
