Rob S. Friedman
June 2024
The General Store
Generations of Hildreths tended the general store and post office, long before Moses split the Bronx and paved Long Island, and a runway for Piper Cubs and Cessnas demanded a tower, and the artists ceded summers to young Wall Street wives in Land Rovers, speeding to lunch dates.
Once the village carpenter, back from Nam, hung pigeon holes on a wall, each with a small keyed door and a brass number, Mrs. Hildreth grew as wary as curious about handing a mailbox key to a new face even though title had changed. Familiarity was lost in a haze of beforetime.
A Topping child holding a parent’s hand, eyeing glass jars of taffy and fudge. So with the Bensons and the Comforts, who had sold off, over time, their acres of potatoes, their tractors and plows, and watched the sandy land bloom stick-built bungalows, then grander homes of impractical design.
Few of the keys, decades old, are still handed down to son, to grandchild, all of whom had grown to know a Hildreth who sorted bills and letters and angled them into boxes as the one-room schoolhouse rang its opening bell, calling to a new generation of Halses, Piersons, Toppings, whose after-school chore was to greet Mrs. Hildreth before using their mail key and bring the envelopes home, unlike the Wall Street wives, who never see a Hildreth, or hold a mail key. The house staff will drop the children at tennis camp or the stables. Wives wait for their phones to charge.
