Tyee Resurrection
Tyee Store’s been closed now for over a year. The sign says you can lease it or buy it. Nobody does either. I suppose in the ‘real world’ the owners would drop the price until it matched a buyer’s estimate of its actual worth, some happy median where both parties feel equal remorse. But not down here. The weeds grow around the place, the flowerbeds look destroyed, the store has that look of long shuttered and going to ruin.
Folks ask all the time: couldn’t we rent it and bring it back to life? Folks who should remember that it was never fully off life support. They just miss the cracker barrel ambience of the joint, an oasis where they could get a paper or share gossip or grab a loaf of ‘day old’ bread. For the hard up, buying on credit was the real draw. For folks like me, I just like having a general store in the neighborhood. It gave the South End a gravitational center. Now it just seems like a rural no place, all of it just residences off the 2 lane blacktop. The Art Gallery next door is rarely open, nothing but a rusty elephant head stuck on its metal siding, might as well say Wildlife Moved. Trouble is, we didn’t. And I suppose the wilds are all we have left, the nettle savannahs, blackberry jungles and salmonberry swamps. The Barefoot Bandit could disappear in here until he grew old and grandfatherly, nobody much giving a damn.
I ride by the store nearly every day on my bike. For Sale. For Lease. The barn out back leans a little more every month. The well house tower pokes up above the dead apple tree. The field with the amphitheater by the pond is tall grass and another year trees will start to reclaim it. It’s possible someone will imagine their capitalist dream here. Maybe not a general store, maybe a Laundromat or a furniture repair or a custom stained glass shop. Maybe a garage in the Art Gallery again —- or an antique store and nursery.
Somebody someday, somehow, will buy this. No doubt when they do we’ll all drop by with our valuable suggestions and insights. Probably won’t frequent the joint, but we’ll certainly wish them well. For awhile ….
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