Ruston Grocery

John said it as well as anyone - why Ruston is unique and special (and its much more than having a corner store)...

Ruston Grocery

An Endangered Species

J. Heineman 5/90

I visited a Mom & Pop Grocery store yesterday, the only one left in this part of Tacoma. The community is a quiet little place . . . . it’s like being back to the time when I was a boy and would walk down out big hill to the little grocery, and after much deliberation over the row of cookie bins, each with their glass door, I would select one favorite cookie, take it to the counter where Mr. Jameston would take my pennies and with a smile, place it in a little paper sack, and I’d leave, pushing the screen door with it’s small cowbell, which clanked upon it’s close.

I had forgotten about the bell, until yesterday. For it was that sound that brought back over 40 years of time for me as I entered the little store . . . . for it too had a cow bell. It even had a small counter and soda fountain, just like the one of my boyhood.

I met Beth there, I know her name because I introduced myself . . . . because that’s “the way” in a place like this . . . . you’re back to where everyone knows you, they even knew about me, and it was my first visit.

I wasn’t really surprised, for it’s a small community, and everyone gathers there to share what’s going-on in their lives. So, - being new in town, they knew about me. It was refreshing in a way, for after living so long in Lon Angeles, where one becomes known only as a drivers license number, an address, and just another car in the massive freeway traffic commute, you soon lose your identity . . . you become a statistic.

That isolation is sought by some, but being jus a “somebody else” without a name can lead to problems, both personal one’s and well as community ones. The entire structure of a community becomes altered, and it is fertile ground for growing the weeds like – “why-should-I-care”. These societal weeds push themselves up through the miles of concrete and pollinate themselves along the freeways, and find safe-haven for their growth among the fences and locked communities, where they grow like wild hollyhocks along the fence lines.

Maybe its my age that requires the move of body and household back to a time and community where I can experience the environment of being a person again.

Maybe its just the times in which we live, for we all have begun to recognize the limits of our environment – that we must save the whales, preserve the wilderness, clean our air, and begin to save those historical structures that house our past . . . times when a youngster knew the woods where just around the corner where a boy could find the joy of exploration, and experience the wonder of sunlight shafting its way through the Oaks, Fir and Maple. A simpler time, where neighbors were not just those in the immediate apartment next door, or the house that shared your fence. Where the entire community were your neighbors, and they cared.

How do you preserve such a community, what do we do to help save that precious resource ? Is it not as worthy a task as the preservation of our wildlife ? I think so. I think it is as important as saving the natural beauty found in our State and National Parks.

You see, I’ve found that community again, for when I closed the screen door on that little grocery – it was the cow-bells’ clank that told me so.

Preserve a Mom & Pop Grocery as a Historical Monument ?

Can you think of any better way to begin our journey back from our ‘head-long-rush’ into the chaotic world we’ve created . . . and now find no longer livable ? One of the main reasons we find it unlivable is that we’ve left out the most basic elements necessary for community . . . . . ourselves and each other.

Sure why not – it would be a positive step in our journey back from being just another “somebody else”.

As for me, I’m going back tomorrow and say Hello to Beth, for you see, I’m a neighbor again. I might even take a cardboard sign to stick in the screen door –

THIS IS A NATIONAL MONUMENT

IT’S AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

COME-IN AND BE A NEIGHBOR

WE PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW YOUR NAME !