It is strange being so far removed from one's childhood, by the distances of time and geography. Interrupted by the immediacy of one's daily routine. And to see an image that makes it all come rushing back.
For many residents, the Corner Store was a staple. A place for last minute items and a bit of gossip, their daily news, their bit of community. The white picket fence you lean on to chat with your neighbors, in a place without many fences.
When I was real young, my grandmother ran the store. It had penny candy and hunters hats, staples like sugar and flour, cleaning supplies, magazines, beer. It had a small dark bar to sit at and sip your coffee with a few odd stools that looked old even then. Sitting in these stools, were salty, worn, good folks — folks who seemed hard and made you mind your manners just by being there. I was never comfortable, at any age, sitting in those stools.
I remember eating dinner there some nights with my grandmother when my mom had to work. And staring at the newspapers, eye level at that time, that were right next to the box of Swedish Fish. I would always pick a few out of.
For many of my friends, it was a place where their parents worked at one point or another, or they had their first job. It changed a lot over the years. Owners, hours, size, even the position of the cash register.
To me it is, ultimately now, a thing of memory. The first place I ever attended an apple pie contest. When I was six, I bought a pack of cigarettes at the Corner Store. Carltons, and they were for my mother. It was before this sort of thing was frowned upon. It was where I got caught stealing at the age of 8. And though they probably should have followed me around the store from that point on, they didn't, because they trusted that I had learned from it. And, for the most part, I had.
To this day, it's the one place that I knew exactly everything they had for sale and which shelf it was on.
I remember dropping a gallon of milk when I was about 10 while crossing Bear Notch Road. It smashed right there in the road, in front of a dark car. Debbie and Dave gave me another one, no charge.
I remember tourists in the parking lot, on their way in or out of the Notch, scratching their heads at the prospect of a store close while their was still sunlight.
I remember knowing the gloom of winter had really begun when the store closed early, because of winter hours.
I remember being among friends and family the first time I went to the store after my car accident with Brett. How Debbie insisted I take the sandwiches that I ordered, and I insisting that I pay. And the warmth and sadness and fog of that moment.
I must have run to that store on an almost daily basis until I left town for good in college. And, no matter what, I always stopped on the way back through.
In the last few years, the cheese steaks weren't as good, the faces not as familiar, and I felt more like a tourist than a local. I bought mostly beer on the way to friends houses, only now with no one to talk to along the way, no familiar glance, no picket fence to lean upon.
I guess this is what eventually happens the older you become, the further away you travel. And slowly, surely that place becomes less and less your own. The familiarity fades. The roots remain, but the branches no longer bare so much fruit.
