It was simply known as “The Mercantile,” a general goods store located on Main Street, not unlike thousands of other such stores of its kind in thousands of other small rural communities. The construction was brick and mortar, two stories, painted white and occupying the corner of 2nd Street; a grand spectacular of items to purchase for farmers or homemakers.
If they didn’t have what you were looking for, they’d special order it – “have it here in ‘bout two weeks.” Your memories are jostled; everyone knew a place just like it.
A hundred years prior to this, there might have been a trading post sitting on or very near the same spot, built from sod or actual timber if it were available. The early settlers of a proposed town or those folks just passing through might need essentials like flour or whiskey; the currencies used were whatever the buyer and seller agreed upon – could have been a couple of chickens or coins of precious metal.
In the current day and age, the once mighty and majestic retailers are being replaced by something called “progress,” an evolution of sorts to make our lives easier with more choices and less work to acquire the goods and services we desire. A feasible argument can be made on either side of the discussion pertaining to the improvement in modern commerce and its impact on the cultural and social well-being of the consumer.
The spark that lit the fire for these thoughts is the closing of the last K-Mart store located in Bridgehampton, NY, a hamlet of two-thousand souls on the easterly side of Long Island. Bearing in mind that Bridgehampton is only 96 miles from downtown Manhattan, it takes roughly two and a half hours to drive there. If the toilet paper at home were in short supply, I’d be taking the family to Taco Bell or Wendy’s and telling the kids to grab extra napkins on the way out.
There was a large marsh in the southwest corner of the Highway 71 and Prairie Road intersection, nothing else beyond that except woodlands and some open pasture. Dump trucks ran non-stop for weeks, unloading dirt. Dozers and excavating equipment leveled and packed the fill. A sign was soon installed, “K-Mart Opening Fall ’69.” The entire world just got a whole lot better.
It might seem a bit trivial to reminisce over such things, but as a child, K-Mart was honored and adored. It was new and exciting and clean, it had everything imaginable for every age group and was affordable for all.
The old Ben Franklin and Montgomery Ward stores had grown stale and complacent. The eight foot overhead fluorescent bulbs were sometimes missing, extremely dim or flickered continuously, triggering headaches or nausea. Nope, not K-Mart, it was bright and shiny and it had automatic sliding doors! We were easily entertained.
We were allowed to ride our bikes to the store, or we could walk, crawling through the concrete culverts that went underneath the busy roads; paradise a few short miles away.
It, too, closed just a few years ago and was revamped into a church, a Chinese restaurant and a parole office. The joke at the time was that you went to pray either before or after you ate – or possibly before or after your appointment with the officer handling your case.
Believing and hoping that life comes full circle, I’d like to live long enough to see every building on every Main Street across the map occupied and thriving; the sidewalks busy with shoppers eager to buy, visit and then return home.
And until that time comes, I’ll continue to patronize the local establishments as best I’m able. In the meantime, I’ll sit and wait for FedEx to deliver my ink cartridges from Amazon. The delivery drones haven’t made it this far into the wilderness…not quite yet.
