Monday, September 23, 2002

i guess i live in

i guess i live in an older suburban neighborhood, for this area anyway.  houses went up around 1900 and are thick with local lore, which no one knows or cares to know.  there are a handful of older businesses from the 50s that have always given me heartache - little empty shops that no one visits, holdovers from a time when all the people who died in their bathtubs of old age were alive and interested in life.  i cant imagine why these particular establishments survived; they seem weak and pathetic and the three that seemed most moribund to me are now finally closed.  there was a small storefront that sold men’s clothes, new and used, with handlettered “sale” signs and miserable ugly polyester shirts that had faded to albino in the sunlit display case; dust lay thick on the packages of underware and socks carefully arranged around them.  there was nothing ever going on inside; the dark door stood haughty, closed and lonely, like the old men i could imagine would have, when young, decided not to shop there, and now resembled the items not being sold.  it was a half-hearted effort, an old man’s hobby, or so i convinced myself.  then there was hickman’s beauty shop, with the rack of empty dryer-chairs, the exhausted lino floor, the proud sign: “featuring miss julie, for young debs.” ms julie’s name was covered with four perfectly parallel strips of masking tape, now transparent and drooping.  it looked to be a place the living might visit to appear more like the dead.  i never saw anyone inside; finally a sign, hastily hand-lettered, appeared on the door, “closed due to illness,” and then all the sinks and counters and aged dryers with plastic upholstered seats disappeared; now the place is full of rugs and cleaning supplies but the same sad sign hangs over the window.  and then, finally, there was the model pharmacy, so-called; with yards of space between individual items on the crumbling shelves, ancient graphics on ancient labels on ancient boxes, untouched and untouchable; each arrangement like a gallery sculpture, unpriced, unwanted, unsought, unpurchased since nixon was the one… their marquee sign had read , for my full eleven years in this neighborhood, “sic kroom needs / underp ads both sizes / bag candy”.  The store reeeked of desuitude and neglect.  now it’s empty and i cant tell if i’m relieved or even more depressed.