The King Kullen in Port Washington is closing; its last day will be Dec. 31. And it’s hitting me hard.
It’s not as if it’s the only grocery store in town. There are several bodegas and two produce/gourmet stores, plus a Stop & Shop, which is probably clapping itself on the back, taking the lion’s share of the credit for finally beating the big competition.
But King Kullen is where I spent many hours, every week, for more than 20 years. There is no getting around the fact that it’s been a huge part of my life, like it or not (and I have done both).
It’s crazy to think that this is the blow I cannot withstand, to my quality of life in Port Washington.
Surely I should save that for when something happens to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation thrift shop on Main Street; the Boston Market in Soundview; or Dairy Barn. Oh, wait, they’re all gone already.
Port Washington is a place about which even Gertrude Stein would have to concede, “There sure is a there, there.”
It’s the end of a peninsula, so it’s not on the way to anywhere else; if you’re here, you probably meant it.
It’s a place that feels like what you imagine people mean when they say, “my hometown.”
As Bill Moyers once said in a documentary about his own hometown of Marshall, Texas, “It’s a place where people know when you’re sick, and care when you die.”
This was a revelation to me, growing up as I did in one of America’s generic suburbs.
Silver Spring, Maryland was nice, but it always felt a bit as if someone had measured it out, like a bolt of cloth in a dry goods store: “From here to here, you’re Takoma Park; from here to here, you’re Wheaton; everything else, you’re Silver Spring.”
By comparison, when my husband and I moved to Port Washington, we seemed to have stumbled into a Frank Capra movie.
For example, there was a market on Main Street which stocked a little bit of everything (including saffron, losing me a $20 bet with my husband), and which would deliver it, too – every week if you liked – long before Amazon or Peapod existed.
I even heard that you could make an arrangement so that the delivery person not only brought your order inside the house, if you were out, but put the milk and eggs in your fridge.
That, of course, was a century ago. Falling upon hard times rather literally, the building went empty and for at least a few years, didn’t even have a floor, sporting a sign to that effect so that trespassers had some warning. At least the literate ones.
Actually, grocery shopping was never my thing. If I were to suddenly win one of those Publisher’s Clearing House prizes, (also a Port Washington business), I would not jump up and down and shriek, “We’re going to the grocery store!” But after long days spent wrangling two rambunctious boys until their father or a sitter could arrive, trips alone to the supermarket became my oasis.
Finally, all the time I needed to read a soup can label! Even the Muzak was quieter than what was waiting for me back home, and I didn’t have to settle whose light saber was which.
When Stop & Shop opened nearby, I heard tales of cheaper prices; but whenever I tried to shop there, I got lost. I just couldn’t fathom the logic of a store where every aisle’s contents were labeled, “All The Ingredients.”
“Clearly NOT ‘All’,” I wanted to answer back, “if you needed another 14 aisles for it!”
What I most treasured about shopping at King Kullen was catching up with acquaintances and friends I bumped into there. Perhaps most important were my encounters with people who weren’t friends at all: people who attended all the same school board meetings I did and yet were on the opposite side, from me, on every question. People with whom I disagreed about virtually everything — even the time of day.
Suddenly, there I was, in line with them for a turn at the deli counter, and somehow I had to pass the time of day that we couldn’t agree about. Somehow, I had to find a way to stay civil and converse; to be agreeable, although we did not agree.
Gradually, I think I learned how.
I know I am a better person for it. And it happened at King Kullen.
