the tulip co-op
Some of you aging hippies out there probably remember the old Skagit Valley Co-op when it used to sit down on the other end of town. Close to the jail so the sheriff could keep an eye on who came and went, all us young longhairs would come out of the jungle once a year to get provisioned up. Fill in what we couldn’t grow …. And catch up on the current events here in Mt. Vernon and Gomorrah.
I tell you what, that was a historic place, that old Co-op. Sure didn’t have room for a fancy Deli or a free range meat section or specialty cheeses from around the world. Don’t remember much of a Beauty and Cosmetic section. Mighta been a magazine rack with Mother Earth News, but that’s all we needed really. Fine Homebuilding Magazine, Naw…. Our shacks were beyond Martha Stewarting…..
Over the past 25 years the Co-op’s grown up along with us. Its belt kept expanding one notch at a time until finally they just bought the whole damn block. Sort of downtown Mt. Vernon’s answer to Wal-Mart.
You think back to those humble beginnings, the cramped bins of grain and the teeny-weeny check-out stand, the loyal customers and the always great staff, you can appreciate how far they’ve come. And maybe us too. I know I’ve baked about one million loaves of bread ground from their grains. And even tho my homebrewing has diminished a bit since they got the giant beer and wine section, a lot of fond memories were from those moonshining Co-op days — even if those memories are starting to slip.
Mt. Vernon, I don’t need to tell you, took a different route than its neighbor to the north. Kept its history. Kept its soul. For those of us who still make the hard trek in from the hinterlands, we want to say thanks. And if there’s any sheriff deputies reading this, I was just kidding about that moonshining……
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