FAREWELL TO THE LITTLE GROCERY
The same family since 1941 ran the little grocery and general store which had its last day on August 30 th , 2022. It’s not the family’s fault, not at all, it’s just circumstance. The clerks have been very sad—people who have worked in the store for many years—and they’ve told me that customers have been crying. They get teary while talking about it themselves. It’s a plain little store, but one that is so familiar to everyone in town that it’s more like a relative than a place of business. Every dark knot in the wooden ceiling is familiar to everyone, and it was always much more than a grocery. There was the tiny post office, a good selection of everything and all kinds of things beyond that, and if there was something one wanted, they would try to get it. They always had good local produce, they’d have organic tomatoes, good local dairy, and fruit from the farmlands a few hours away. I think of my mother weighing grapes on the little old scale in the produce section, and I can pict