The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Techno Tom was down at the closing of Tyee Store last week buying up all the canned goods at 50% off.  Even at the usual South End mark up, 50% off, according to T.T’s calculations, was worth filling his pickup with everything from Vienna sausages to water chestnuts.  Most everybody else was caching up Bud Lite 12 packs and PBR tall boys at 25% off.  Customers who dropped out of Stanwoodopolis High, the ones who pony up $3 on ATM transactions of $10 for smokes and that night’s TV dinner, thinking only jerks need math, probably didn’t cash in on the deals.

T.T. tweeted a few dozen pals who showed up en masse to clear the rest of the shelves and then a few of us capitalist vultures parked at the table for a couple of cold ones with Don, the manager who presided over the post mortem of the late great Tyee Store, now officially shuttered, possibly forever.  The neon beer signs went dark, the coolers were turned off, the framed South End posters came down, the place went quiet and dark as Tut’s Tomb.

We didn’t have a lot to say.  Brick mortar gives way every day to digital shopping and maybe Tyee had outlived its terminal prognosis.  Patti came by with her kids, one not even born when she first hired on as clerk some 16 years ago.  Sad to say, but the Store was the South End’s largest employer all those years.  Minimum wage, no benefits.  A lot of us worked there.  But nobody longer than Patti….

So we drank a few toasts to Ted and Ellen, the original owners, to Jigs and Ruby, to Dick and Sandy, to Don and Helen, all the owners.  I tried to remember the names of a few of the help, but time has taken its toll and those beers didn’t refresh any brain cells.  I finally said, as usual, it was time to go home and face the music.  We all shuffled out and into the night, solemn as casket bearers.  And another Mom and Pop store closed its doors and went dark on the backroad of an America receding in the rearview.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2012 at 2:48 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.