The Return of the Corner Store

It happened Saturday afternoon. The return of the corner store! A privately owned, honest to goodness corner store…not an industrial-cleaner-perfumed 7-cough-11. An independent in a sea Corporate Motherhood.
Quietly and with no fanfare, the shopkeeper hung his shingle, flipped the switch and the neon ‘open’ sign flickered to life.

I grew up with Wong’s Confectionery and Bartle’s Drugs, Yee’s and Plummer’s Hardware, too. Right there on my corner, just a half a block from my house. Above Wong’s there was Dr. Dillenburg’s office, the neighborhood GP who still made house calls.

That corner was a very special place in the neighborhood, a place for day to day needs, a gathering place, a hang out, a clearing house of information and a primo location for yelling, “olly olly oxen free” at the end of a neighborhood wide game of hide and seek.

There weren’t any laws preventing the sale of cigarettes to minors but Mr. & Mrs. Wong and the Yee’s simply wouldn’t sell them to kids anyway, at least not without a note from their parents (whom they all knew) and could spot a forgery a mile away.
Parents would send their kids out the door clenching a dollar, or five, on a mission for late Saturday-morning-what’s-for-lunch-fixins, and a little candy on the side…you could drop by for a quick stop that dispenses what 7-11 does not. The cures for what ails you - bread that needs chewing, conversation, stinky cheeses, a bit of gossip, non-neon mustard, an eagle eye on your child and real coffee …

An environmentally friendly alternative to firing up the Mall Assault Vehicle to lumber across town to the big green box to park and walk further than you live from the corner from for a simple jug of milk or a dozen eggs…we welcome you, corner store!

Helping build community, hat’s off to the corner store!

A chance to leave your damn car at home and stop in for a little something you didn’t know you needed. Never know who you might run into (and didn’t knock down), and what you might find out. Better than the bulletin board at the mall or the latest twitternet. By a long shot.