A Year of Blogging: March 29, 2011

March 29 was National Mom and Pop Business Day. It is a day to celebrate small businesses and the people who own them. Small business owners pour their blood, sweat, tears and dreams into their businesses. They know their customers. They know their products. There is a connection. It seems small businesses are getting harder and harder to find. There are so many chain places and big box stores. And while I love Target and Kohls, I also appreciate small businesses, and try to frequent them when I can. America was built on small businesses. Every big business started out small: one store, one restaurant. Small businesses are the fabrics of their communities. The small town I grew up in had a couple of small businesses. There was the small grocery store, which made fresh subs in the small deli. The subs were delicious! The store had been there when my mother was a child, it was always the Cash Market. It was owned by several families throughout it's existence. When we were teenagers, it was owned by a nice family who had moved in from out of town. The mother and one of the older sons usually ran the checkout, and the dad worked the deli and meat counter. My sister and I went there after school to pick up something mom needed for dinner. Or maybe we bought a pepsi and a snack. A lot of the time in the summer, we would each get a sub for lunch. Turkey sub with cheese and lettuce. My sister got hers with extra mayo, I went for just a little bit of mayo. Fred knew how each of us liked the subs. If one of us were at the store without the other, Sue worried about the other one. It gave us an extra sense of security, that they were looking out for us. There was also a 'general store' in town. Officially, it was called L&L Corner store. L&L for the owners, Lionel & his wife, Laura. No one remembered it was the L&L Corner Store. It was just the Corner Store. Or Lionel's. Lionel had a little bit of everything- greeting cards, gum and candy, newspapers, hardware, crayons and craft supplies, replacement glass for broken windows, and even some jewelry. You could find almost anything there. You dropped off your film and in a few days picked up your pictures. And Lionel knew you and what you needed. He knew what size glass you needed for the window you broke again. He knew if we had a big project in school and needed poster board (possibly because all of the kids your age had already been in). He knew when your parents birthdays were, and what to suggest as a possible last minute gift. He knew the day I got braces, and that I was not allowed to chew gum with braces. That was a very powerful deterrent! See, Lionel and my dad were best friends. I knew, if he saw me buying gum, he would tell my parents. I could not have my sister buy the gum for me, because he knew I liked Big Red and she usually bought bubble gum. So in the three and a half years I had braces, I didn't buy one stick of gum. As soon as the braces came off, that is another story... Both the Cash Market and the Corner Store are gone from Berlin's landscape. It is a shame. When they closed, the town lost part of itself. That last minute school project requires a trip to a neighboring town. There's a Subway 20 minutes away, but it's not the same. And the kids can buy their gum anywhere, regardless of whether or not they have braces.