Boom Goes the Dynamints

(Originally published 1/29/15)

For many years, family excursions from the Bronx to Bangor, Pennsylvania—to visit my maternal grandparents—found all concerned on the serpentine Richmond Road, which zigzagged through sleepy, picturesque farmland with barns, silos full of corn, and—a personal favorite—algae-strewn ponds. This enticing visual was the last leg of our journey from uber-urban to serene rural, and I remember being especially captivated by one pond in particular. Sure, I liked the one with the white ducks in it and an abandoned yellow school bus colorfully filling in the backdrop. But the pond with the diving board alongside it had a special allure. I often wondered what it would be like to dive into that murky-looking drink with those ubiquitous dragonflies and mosquitoes hovering all around it in summertime. I wondered, too, how deep the thing was and how a person might extricate himself from its mysterious muck. My youthful flights of fancy imagined the pond’s floor as quicksand-like.

On this very same pastoral thoroughfare, at the intersection of the intriguingly named Ott’s Corner, was also a bona fide “general store”—the Richmond General Store to be precise—replete with a couple of gas pumps out front, a pay telephone, and a Coca-Cola soda cooler on its front porch. It was an ordinary dwelling—a house actually— that performed double duty as retail space. From our city perspective, this was Ike Godsey’s place on the big screen of life. My brothers and I perpetually pined to stop there, but my father—ever suffering from driver’s fatigue and the unquenchable desire to get to his destination—habitually ignored our pleas. 

Then one day on a return trip to the Bronx, Pa—for some inexplicable reason—relented. We at long last stopped at the general store and purchased—of all things—a couple of packs of Dynamints. They were Tic Tac candy rip-offs that were stocked at the time by the Richmond General Store. In the big picture, though, we got a whole lot more than a couple of packs of Dynamints. We entered the general store to jingling bells, which alerted the proprietor that potential customers were on the premises. From a back room, a very sweet, elderly woman in her nightgown emerged to transact with us and make change for our considerable purchase. Having at long last patronized a real country general store—one that we had had our eyes on for a long time—it was definitely a morning to remember.

Alas, this general store is no more. The last time we passed by it was a house—and just a house—again. The gas pumps, pay telephone, and soda cooler were mere memories. Locals, I suspect, no longer need a general store in the here and now. And Dynamints, too, haven’t stood the test of time, but I’m certainly glad we interrupted a kindly businesswoman’s morning coffee to buy a couple of packs of them all those years ago.