On Saturday night a fire destroyed the general store in Putney, Vermont. The top floor burned completely, and the lower floors were destroyed by water damage. The building was more than two hundred and fifty years old, and it had been a store for nearly a hundred and fifty years.
I was staying up the road at my sister's house, in fact, I must have been one of the last people in there. The fire department got the call at eight minutes to ten. I'd stopped in a little before nine and they hurried me out because they were closing. I'd gone in ostensibly to buy a chocolate bar, but really I was just looking for an excuse to browse.
I'm fascinated by food stores of all kinds. I love to see the different permutations, the product mixes and the ways items are organized in different regions, different countries, and even different neighborhoods.
The Putney General Store had a wonderful mix of mainstream food products, along with organic and locally produced foods, not to mention the toothpaste, video rentals, and fishing tackle. It was one of two groceries in town, the other being the food coop, which has its own charm, although you sometimes have to endure a very long wait for a very simple transaction.
Every time I passed the store on Sunday there were people milling around, looking stunned. My sister said she saw a police car out front. Having grown up in New York City, she assumed they were there to deter looters. (Nobody loots stores in Putney, Vermont.) Then she looked over and saw the police officer sitting motionless taking it all in, as stunned as anyone else.
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