Poetry

Variety Store — By a 1980s Kid

A poem remembering an old store from a little city

Mom could drive downtown in two minutes and we could find Christmas garland and Halloween napkins and plastic shovels to dig in the sand.

They sold Styrofoam shapes for making dolls or planets. They sold stickers you had to lick and seal. I knew they were old fashioned (we sometimes

shopped at the mall), but when they closed, I felt like ghosts were replacing something solid. I missed the metal of the big cash register

jingling like the nickels in my coin purse.

When I was a kid, we used to go to the Edmonds Variety Store on Main Street in downtown Edmonds, a suburb of Seattle. Even forty years ago, it felt like a place from an earlier time, with all kinds of household stuff and craft supplies and toys and most any little odds and ends you might need. Instead of seasonal displays, they just had everything all year round. When it closed, it was like losing a little part of our history.