 |
| Diamond's Candy Shoppe, October 30 2004. Closed since 2011. |
I can still smell the candy in Caszh's store
sugar and flavorings permeating the air
The meat at Mike Weiss's grocery and butcher shop
where my grandmother would send me to pick up her weekly order
tick book in hand
On the walk to the Tiny Tot playground there was a yard with a gazing ball
that would shine bright as the sun
(twenty years later I bought one of my own)
I remember the day they paved the brick road in front of my grandmother's house
the bricks are still there, you can see them through the potholes
Woolworth's was a place where you could buy a bag of used stamps
Mexican jumping beans
a cheap 35 millimeter camera
and the latest KISS album
I saw Bambi at the State Theater, my first movie
and Star Wars a few years later
Chocolates from Diamond's
Comics from Koronkiewicz's
or MacDonald's newsstand
or Wadzinski's, once or twice
there was a brown and white horse and a bright red boar
that you could ride at the IGA
Burgers and fries from Carroll's came with a little toy
(My father liked to eat at the Blue Bird sometimes)
The Card Shoppe was an archive of ancient cards and little porcelain statues
Mr. Bohinski would sell the cards at the price marked on them thirty years earlier
and then give a discount on top
while telling me stories of my grandfather courting my grandmother
when he was a foreman at the Duplin Mill
The Leader Store had a chain track system for taking money to the main office
Leventhal's displayed posters featuring the latest menswear styles from the 70s well into the 90s
gone, all gone
homes and vacant lots
empty buildings or new construction
living in memory until they are forgotten
ghosts whose stories will no longer be told
Posts
