‘Goodbye to Bucket’s’

Right around the corner from our boys’ grade school,

they’d go there — first with us and then, older enough,

with their friends — for after-school treats, Everett’s

bushy mustache always smiling behind the counter.

Thirty-three years is a long time to know someone,

let alone a grocery store, and one could claim that

three generations of kids passed through his doors.

When Augie, our 12-year-old, told me about the sign

on the door he looked away, maybe from the idea itself —

he already knows things change and sometimes disappear.

He knows more than he can put into words. A good

or bad day at school always meant a Snickers bar

or frozen Eskimo Pie, though finding a parking spot,

especially in summer, meant frustration, with all

the workers wanting one of his deviled egg sandwiches

(made only on Wednesdays). The middle school across

the street, the high school not far away, the railroad

station (where men line up looking for work), Bucket’s

certainly has seen its share of good and bad times (mostly

bad now), even when it was only a place to drive past

on one’s way somewhere grander. Places come and go

so it’s hard to say exactly why this one’s so special,

maybe because it’s impossible to imagine a town like

East Hampton, where so much happens that doesn’t stay

or belong here, not having one place unlike any other.

Or maybe it’s because of the children who grow up so fast

and then also leave. Well, Bucket’s, thanks and goodbye.

(Let’s just pray it won’t be replaced by another clothing store!)

    Philip Schultz's most recent collections of poems are "The God of Loneliness" and "Failure," which won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2008. He lives in East Hampton.