Taking advantage of a couple of gift cards, Denise and I recapitulated a date night like we had years ago: spending the evening at Barnes & Noble. For several years our older kids could watch the younger kids of an evening. Those evenings, usually Wednesday evenings, Denise I would do something, go to dinner or shopping or whatever. But they would almost always end with some time spent at the local Barnes & Noble. It wasn’t close to our house but it was close enough.
We almost raised our older kids at that Barnes & Noble. On the way home from the homeschool co-op, it
was a frequent “fun” stop.
But then it closed. That
must be eight or nine years ago now. (In
my opinion that store lost too much traffic after a Starbucks opened across the
street. People who used to stop in that Barnes
& Noble for a fancy coffee, ourselves included, could now simply drive
through the Starbucks, ourselves included.)
We took some of our kids to the store as it neared its close date. Must have been the end of December with David
and Thomas home from college. As we sadly
left, David, I think, turned and, looking at the store in general, said, “Well…goodbye.”
Other life changes contributed to our changing habits over
the years. There are other Barnes &
Noble stores in the St. Louis area and we’ve visited them from time to
time. They are just not as convenient
for a “oh, let’s stop in while we’re out here” trip as the old location.
Revisiting a Barnes & Noble on Friday night didn’t bring
back these memories. The closing of a
grocery store did it.
On my way to the bargain grocery store, Aldi’s, I passed the
Schnucks store that would normally be my second stop to get whatever I didn’t
find at Aldi’s. This Saturday I saw
signs for “Store Clearance, 40%” off.
Uh-oh.
We’ve been going to that store for years. Most of those years it was a Shop’N’Save. A few years ago Schnucks took it over when
Shop’N’Save left the St. Louis market.
That transition didn’t change it much and many of the same checkers
continued to work there.
I’ve noticed that shopping at the same stores year after
year, you will see the career arc of some people who work at the same store for
decades. They were young when I was young
and now they are gray when I am gray.
You get to know them a little bit, who is chatty and who is snarky, for
example. And they get to know you. And your kids – if only by sight and a few
words in passing once-a-week. And they
get to see your kids grow up… at least until the kids get old enough to rebel
at the idea of shopping with Dad.
But sometimes they still ask. One checker at this Shop’N’Save took a liking
to Josh and John Paul when they were very young. She continued to ask about them in later
years whenever I end up in her check-out aisle.
Even this year she asked – and she must not have seen them for ten
years.
So when I stopped in on Saturday to pick up what 40%-off
deals might be left, I was disquieted to see the whole produce section empty
and ¾ of all the shelves in the store empty.
Seems strange to feel sad about something as commercial as a grocery
store. I think the sadness comes from
the losing an ordinary, regular thing, from the break with a string of memories
that were in no way peak experiences but just the hum-drum of life.
And wondering about the people. I didn’t recognize either of the checkers
working on Saturday. Had the others been
scattered to other stores?
Unemployed? Retired – and finally
getting off their feet after a lifetime of standing at a cash register?
At a macro level I understand, I endorse, the creative destruction
of capitalism. If a business keeps losing
money, better that it be closed to make way for something else. It would be wrong of me to insist that a
store stay open because I’m sentimental about it.
But I find myself sounding more and more like an “old person”
noting that building has been torn down (I first saw Santa Claus at a party in
the basement there) and there’s an athletic field where that other building used
to be (I used to walk by there every day going to high school).
Living in the city in which I grew up means that indulging
in those feelings ignores the many things that have remained the same or have organically
grown better. So I note the dear things
that drift away on the river of time and turn upstream wondering, “What’s next?”
