When Thrift Stores Give Up

I can't stop thinking about the poor little guy.  We met him just a couple of weeks ago when the Valley Thrift store around the corner from our house displayed a sign that said they were permanently closed.  Our van was packed with a bunch of still-useful household goods, toys & games & such, things that we had decided that we no longer needed but which didn't make the cut for our own "indoor yard sale" which is coming up this Saturday.  We hate to throw away something that somebody else could use so we went on over to Colerain Avenue, where a new thrift store had opened in what had been a nice golf shop not long ago (for you local geezers, long ago it was a bar called TJ Mineshaft).  It's next door to the Graeter's ice cream shop kinda catty-corner from Northgate Mall.  The large printed sign just said "THRIFT STORE", black on white.

We walked in the open door and the place was like a bake-oven (as my Dad would say), just like our house, but the man behind the counter greeted us even more warmly.  He reminded me so much of Marcy's late father, George - that long nose, the sharp cheek bones, the brown eyes, hair white as I imagine George's would be if he lived still.  He welcomed us in a heavy accent that my ear knew was from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean.  I quickly zeroed in on the books (mostly romances, no thanks) then circled around to find a couple of small boxes of my beloved vinyl LP records.  As I flipped expertly through the disks I half listened to their conversation.  "Isn't it hot?"  "I am used to it."  (Merle Haggard with a Dixieland band!).  "...Ladies shirts...drapes...bedspreads..." (Glenn Campbell, Tiajuana Brass, some nice Sixties & Seventies gems).  "Barry, bring those boxes in."  No money and no need to buy any records, I obediently toted in our donations to his cause.

I had to ask.  "Sir, where do you come from?"  "I come from the land of our lord, Jesus Christ.  Sixty two years ago I come to America, sixty two years, and I love this country, and love God and God loves me, he loves us all."  Ah, a Palestinian Christian I suppose.  We promised to return soon after we cleaned our house some more.  Well met and well parted.

And clean we did.  Basement.  Attic, both sides of it.  Sweeping, sweating, sorting.  The file cabinets, the bookshelves, the backroom where all the stuff gets dumped to be sorted.  Done, with lots of junk thrown out, some interesting things for our "indoor yard sale" (ahem, THIS SATURDAY) and the van once again full of stuff for our new thrift store buddy.  We tried to visit on the Saturday of the Independence Day weekend and found the store closed.  Probably the holiday, we thought.  We tried again the Tuesday after the holiday and found a sign on the door in his broken ("sixty two years I come...") English, something like "A lot have goning on, I be back in afternoon."  It was late afternoon, you know Marcy & I aren't exactly earlybirds.  We hoped everything was OK, but it didn't look good.  We waited another week and passed the time with still more cleaning and a little pricing of our for-sale goods and stopped in at the thrift store again today.

Our buddy was outside the open doors straightening the shopping carts and he greeted us happily as ever.  I skimmed past the romance paperbacks to check the records and again listened to the conversation between Marcy and her "Papa-Ganger", as I thought him.  The bad news came out right away.  He can't take donations because he is trying to sell everything and get out.  "Robbed, robbed by Dan Howell-Templin, a man I tried to help, a man I took under my wing and gave a job, gave him rides to Hamilton, Ohio.  Robbed of all of my gold, my silver, my jewelry, my gold and silver, my life savings.  He sold it all to pawn shops and I have not money to buy it back.  My son had a gun pointed at the man but could not pull the trigger to shoot him.  "I leave him to God to take care of him" my son said.  We must trust in God, we must all trust in God's love for us."

I can't stop thinking of the poor guy.  I'm gonna go back with a few bucks I got for my birthday and see if I can't find something I can use.  Maybe you can help too.  It's not far from our house.  You can go after our indoor yard sale.