I have been to wakes for people, of course, and even for a newspaper. But this is the first time I have been to a wake for a grocery store.
Nevertheless, here I am, at 6 or so on Tuesday night, at the Lakewood Bar & Grill. A table is full of Minyard store-brand items, and candles are flickering. The band is tuning up, and people are trickling in to pay their last respects. (The handful of regular customers, in fact, look a little annoyed at the commotion.) There are even a reporter and photographer from Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper, which makes me think the assigning editor reads the Advocate.
"This is about losing part of the neighborhood," says Ann Spicer, the Hollywood Heights resident who put the wake together. "This is just really sad."
And a bit surreal, but the entire day had been like that. When I walked into the store for the last time, at 2 p.m., the in-store music system — and I’m not making this up — was playing Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence. There was hardly any merchandise left, and many of the remaining fixtures were tagged, denoting where they would go next. Much hugging was going on: customers and each other, customers and employees, employees and each other.
"The people I’m really worried about are the ones who shopped here who don’t have any place else to go," says Andy Williams, who was the manager for 6 1/2 years. Williams let many of these people buy groceries on credit, something no one ever publicized. He just did it, because it was the right thing to do.
This is what we’re losing. Yes, it was just a grocery store, and a increasingly dingy one at that. It’s difficult to argue with those who have commented here, or said elsewhere, that they didn’t like the grungy parking lot or the produce that looked like it had been on the shelf too long. But that’s a symptom, not the disease. If the chain had cared, those things wouldn’t have been problems. But it didn’t care, and we’re the worse off for it. Sometimes, life is not about free-range chickens, no matter how upscale the neighborhood becomes. Sometimes, it’s about cookies that look like Oreos, but are a whole lot cheaper. So pass the package of Hy-Top knock-offs, and enjoy them while you can.
