The Places of Youth

The Boston Herald

I slip sometimes. I say Lauriat's instead of Barnes and Noble. My mother did something similar. ``It's in the icebox,'' she would say and I'd roll my eyes. She knew the word was refrigerator just as I know the right name of the bookstore. But despite my knowing, the wrong name may come out.

Maybe it's the mind's way of nudging memory. My mother used to tell me, whenever she said  “icebox,'' that on hot days she would wait outside on the stoop for the iceman because after he cut off a large chunk of ice to haul up to her mother, he would hand a small piece to her.

And I could picture her in those moments - not my mother, but a girl like me. 

I've told my kids how Lauriat's was at South Shore Plaza and how I bought my first hardcover book there. And I've waxed on about other stores long gone - Sheridan's and Wethern's, where my mother worked; Cummings, where I worked. And Kresges where Elaine Rooney and I ran into Paul Anka when we were 16.

The news that Federated Department Stores has bought the parent company of Filene's isn't a shock. Nothing lasts. Not the stores we shop in or the houses we grow up in or the churches where we worship. But what is a shock is how I feel about this store. I don't understand the legaltieis of this merger, why it doesn’t violate anti-trust laws. What I do understand, though, is how this merger impacts me. It's one more giant step away from my past and one more  “There used to be.’'

My father liked to drive me around his old neighborhood.  “There used to be a house there. That's where I got married. There used to be a church.''

And I would think - coming back home, climbing up the stairs, sitting at the kitchen table, everything exactly the way I left it - that this is never going to happen to me. 

But it happens to everyone. Stores close. Buildings get knocked down. People die. Fields where you played as a child get paved.

My mother bought my junior prom gown in Filene's. And all the clothes for my honeymoon. And baby clothes for my son. 

Many places we went to no longer exist: Jordan Marsh, Conrad and Chandler, Woolworth's, Paragon Park, the old St. Bernadette's. So many theaters and restaurants.

Filene's wasn't special. But it feels that way because it's the cheese standing alone. The game goes on. But the players change: the farmer, the dell, the boys and girls I held hands with long grown. 

There used to be Filene's, we will tell our grandchildren. And they will think, as all young people do, that things like this, the losing of places of their youth, will never happen to them.