These are things from my earlier life in eastern Massachusetts. At lower left, a typical wood frame porch house, a standard vernacular architecture I love. At middle left, something that looks like a bridge but I'm not sure, it could be a sign post. At the top, the sign for "Building No. 19 7/8", a junk shop my father frequented. "Building Number Nine" was a chain of salvage and surplus shops, full of dead merchandise removed from leftover goods in poor condition. The top number of the fraction designated which of the stores in the chain this was. My father, obsessed with getting "bah-gins" (Boston accent there), would go there almost every day and return with something damaged and dusty. There was also a flower shop and a corner for salvaged fruit and vegetables, which my father also collected. In this little market, which was in the grubby vestibule of the main shop, my father and a few other local geezers of various ethnicities ("The Armenian Guy," "The Albanian Guy," "The Jewish Guy,"etc.) got together to socialize and blab. The people at the store all got to know my father since he was in there buying something every day. The store even celebrated my father's 90th birthday with a custom-made cartoon card done by the artist who did the ads for the store.
Shortly after my dad died in 2013, Building No. 19 7/8" closed, and after that the whole chain disappeared. Those who knew my father and his life there remarked that once my father was gone there was no reason to keep the store open. Last I heard, there were plans to demolish the old store where the shop was and re-build a fancy new shopping center there. A "visit" with Google Street View shows a new shopping center there, but hardly fancy, just a strip mall with a few chain stores such as Advance Auto Parts and Chipotle, with "Dollar Tree" replacing Building No. 19.
Black tech pen on sketchbook page, 5" x 8", August 27, 1998.
No comments:
Post a Comment