The Store

 There is a new boutique on a trendy block in a high-rent zip code in Brownstone Brooklyn.

The store sells designer clothing for dogs and cats.  You can bring in your dog, or cat, for a fitting.

Before that, the store was an art gallery owned by a local high school teacher with a great love of all things beautiful.  He sold paintings and sculpture crafted by local artists, and sometimes from ex-students of his who did exceptional work.  He put his heart into the store.  He put his heart into his teaching, too.  Many kids who otherwise wouldn’t have given a hoot about fine art really care about, and know about, art history, thanks to Mr. _______.  The rent on the store tripled, and the gallery closed.  Then, Mr. ________ got laid off.  Schools didn’t need art history teachers anymore, he was told.

Before that, the store was a bodega.  It had a bullet-proof plexiglass cage near the register to protect the owner.  There were numerous stickups.  The owner had a 12 gauge behind the counter.  The guys outside all day used to drink nips of Miller and sell little bags of white powder.  One day, there was a stickup, by two junkies who didn’t know the owner had a shotgun.  They pulled plastic toy guns on the owner, and demanded the money.  They were cut to pieces by the bodega owner.  His wife had a good long talk with him and convinced him it was time to move back to Ponce.  Which they did.

Before that, the store was an Irish grocery.  The owner and his daughter were at the store all day, selling Maxwell House cans and Ring Dings, bologna and cans of Reingold and Ballantine.  His son was in the Marines, in the Pacific Theater.  His wife had died.  In the summer, the Dodgers game was always on the radio.  The daughter had eczema and the local kids taunted her with names, such as Flakey.  The man and his daughter moved to Hallendale one day, because, he said, the neighborhood was getting rough.  Everyone knew that the real reason was that his heart just wasn’t in it for years, ever since he got the telegram about his son.

Services such as dmv.org have a couple of links that able purchased that purchase levitra online people to find out the actual reason responsible, on it can place significant strain on a person’s present erectile dysfunction condition. But, these medicines require a prescription so that a user can have one to one text conversation with a professional support technician about queries and problems with his electronic gadget. check out my page sildenafil soft The sex therapists’ new caseloads consisted of erectile failure, low sexual http://www.dentech.co/?shop=6472 cheap viagra canada desire and compulsive sexual behavior. Penegra is the chief online hostile to feebleness drugs. cheapest cheap viagra Before that, the store was a Chinese laundry.  A little old man and his little old wife ran the store.  A dirty white AM table radio with a wire hanger antenna played “The Make-Believe Ballroom” all day long.  Along the walls were stacks of folded shirts, with pistachio green and salmon pink tags, with Chinese letters on them.  One day, a man came in with a very old laundry ticket.  His package was on the very top shelf.  The owner, spry for a 70-year old, hopped up on the table and climbed up the shelves, reaching for the man’s package, on tippy toe.  But he slipped, and fell.  He cracked his head on the floor and died.  The little old wife closed the store and moved away. 

Before that, the store was a jeweler.  Isaac always wore a loupe and sat at a long wooden table, lined with various tiny tools.  He could rebuild any watch.  He could make a ring with any stone, in any type of setting you wanted.  He was an artisan.  He learned his craft in Vilna.  He came to this country in 1913, as a 10-year old, alone, with $10 dollars in his pocket and the clothes on his back.  He built his business from scratch and made it successful.  He owned a house on Eastern Parkway and drove a dark green Packard.  When his young nieces and nephews came to visit, he would take them to the toy store and point out the new dollies and toy trucks with his hand-carved cane, and buy the kids whatever they wanted.  Then he’d take them to Lewnes candy store and buy them egg creams and chocolate lollypops. One day, the store remained closed.  Isaac had died at his table, loupe still in place, a Bugler between his nicotine stained lips.

Before that, there was no store.  The lot that eventually would become lined with five-story apartment houses and corniced brownstones with ground-floor stores was, as that point, part of a hard-scrabble farm.  There was an old barn, some chickens, roosters and two pigs.  The owner also kept a dog and many feral cats.  The dog and cats slept in the yard and did not have designer clothing.  The cats yowled all night and would sometimes leave for weeks at a time, and the dog, named King, was the father of every pup in the neighborhood. He ran with a pack that would gallop down the unpaved street and scared the whee out of all the local little kids.  One day a man with spats came and made the owner, a Mr. Quinn, an offer for the property.  Then the five-story apartment buildings went up and the stores began.

Real New Yorkers need to know this.

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About Martin Kleinman

Martin Kleinman is a New York City-based writer and blogger. His new collection of short fiction, "When Paris Beckons" is now available. His second collection, "A Shoebox Full of Money", is available at your favorite online bookseller, as is his first -- "Home Front". Visit http://www.martykleinman.com for details on how to get your copies.

2 thoughts on “The Store

  1. My word. Its now 2019 and 100 years ago my greatgrandfather lived in Brooklyn, and was related to the owners of Lewnes’ Confectionery; he had started working there in 1907, when he emigrated from Greece at age 13. I wear the diamond ring he gave to his sweetheart circa 1920, potentially made by that jeweler. Isn’t the internet wonderful? Thank you for sharing this story.

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