The Corner Grocery Store

Many years ago my wife Billie and I once embarked upon a quest in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn in the hopes of finding a certain street corner that time had forgotten. That intersection was still fresh in my memory. How could I ever forget that four-floor red-bricked building topped by a teal green spire? And how could I overlook those finely chiseled glass blocks that separated the street from that building's basement below? The building was a magnificent edifice that adorned the edge of Eleventh Street, off Eighth Avenue, down the block from Prospect Park.

Jack, Mom, Me, & Dad

 

What made this memory so special—and so personal to me—was the thought of a fire- engine–red grocery store that graced this building on the street level.  The neighbors all knew it as Lande & Spaight grocers or L&S for short.  I simply referred to it as "dad's store."

My brother, Jack and I spent many memorable hours helping my dad there. To this day, we can pretty much tell you where anything was in that store. We can tell you about the large gray step  that led into a friendly and busy grocery store and that the closet-sized bathroom was located just past the frozen-food refrigerator, in the furthest reaches of the store. If you needed to know, we could tell you that the White Rock soda bottles stood like bowling pins on the wooden slatted floor across from that refrigerator. Potatoes, onions, carrots, and the like filled clean wooden bins at the front across from the checkout counter, where dad usually stood with a tiny pencil behind his right ear. The chores we did for Dad were simple ones, such as stocking the shelves, dusting the bottles of unrefrigerated sodas, or separating the empty returned bottles in the basement. One of our rewards was a free lunch at "Herman's Ice Cream Parlor," located just across the street on Eleventh Avenue. My menu never varied; my lunch was always the same—tuna on toast with lettuce and tomato and, from the fountain, a large glass of coke with crushed ice and two thin straws.

As time passed, that corner grocery store turned into a dry-cleaning establishment, then evolved into a bodega, then went back to being a grocery store. 

When Billie and I traveled there last, we saw a deli. Through all these changes, I realized at least one thing remained the same—that first dark gray step in the ever-changing corner store is still a doozy.

                  

     "The more things change, the more they remain the same."

—Alphonse Karr