There are two popular corner stores in my neighborhood. One at the end of my street and another one directly at the next corner. The one at the next corner is the one I spent most of childhood going to. My friends and I always went there for chips and juice and candy, it was exactly near the school yard of Benjamin Franklin Lower/Middle School. When they weren’t in school we would take over that school yard riding bikes and filling the ground with chalk. But nothing would make the trip complete without going to that corner store a few steps away.
As a child, it looked like they had everything. We used to buy the candy cigarettes and sit on the steps in front of the school and act like grown ladies talking and laughing. We would play house and ride around with our bikes acting like they were cars, we would park them in front of the corner store and make the smaller kids sit outside with them and we would bring them something back from the store like a popsicle.
Our favorite thing to get from there was a watermelon lollipop. Those were the best things since blow pops(not better than blow pops, but really close). Nothing tasted like watermelon lollipops and they were shaped exactly like watermelons. The other corner store is fairly new but has adapted to the neighborhood very quickly. Late summer nights of these last two summers, my friends and I would wait really late until it got dark and then we would go to the corner store and order chicken finger platters and sit inside the house and talk about the cute papi boys with the long hair in the corner stores. Even though it’s just a corner store, when you don’t have a lot in your neighborhood you make memories with the small things.