Arts Speak Out
You Can't Get Anywhere From Here
by Isabelle Hutchings, Cornell University, May 4, 2008
The store is physically on the outskirts of town, but it’s the center nonetheless. Although the deeds to the dilapidated building have passed through many calloused fingers over the years, it has been called The Landenberg Sun for as long as anyone can remember. As Landenberg legend goes, the store was named when its builder and original administrator, Bill Hewlett, watched the sunrise from the hill-topped building site on the day he acquired it in1872. Others claim that the name actually arose when the general store’s clientele realized that afternoon sun has a way of filtering through the paned windows that sets the entire store aglow in a swirl of shimmering particles.
Although those original panes have been replaced a few times in the last hundred and thirty six years, the light and the store itself have remained pretty much the same. In the humid heat of a Pennsylvania summer when the aisles are packed with patrons clamoring for hand-dipped ice-cream, they don’t even need to turn the lights on until well after nine-o-clock at night. The long, bright hours are one of the store’s most loved features. From the crack of dawn at five-thirty until ten-o-clock at night, our community revolves around its Sun.
Fittingly, Ray is its proprietor now. After six years of serving as a personal chef for a contractually anonymous heiress, he decided it was time to get back in touch with his town. In 2002, he and his son, John moved out of the mansion and into a cozy apartment above my family’s barn. Throughout high school, much to my groggy dismay, I heard the tell-tale chugging of his ancient Camaro precisely at five-fifteen every morning. On the rare day that John and I were able to drag ourselves out of bed early, Ray would treat us to breakfast at the store. The bagel sandwiches were always piping hot, made with perfectly melted cheddar and our hens’ brown eggs, if we could find them. After breakfast, I always swapped out a book from the stacks of worn paperbacks in the Reader’s Exchange corner. Then, John and I would snag the school bus right from the store, securing our impromptu pickup with a bagel bribe for our driver, April.
The store has always been enviably well stocked with emergency items, like sugar, milk, and bread. It sports a deli overflowing with chunky chicken salads and made-when-you-order subs, but to this day my favorite section is the penny candy. Right by the cash register where the clerk can keep a wary eye on wandering hands, there are about ten glass jars enclosed by jaunty silver lids. Each jar contains a different delicacy from Swedish fish on one end beside the live bait to tootsie rolls on the other wedged next to Ray’s famous homemade bread. Armed with small scoops, children and adults alike stuff brown paper baggies to the brim. When their sacks are bulging satisfactorily, Ray weighs the treats on an old-fashioned scale and jokes with the kids as they count out their change.
There’s a lot of change around the Sun these days, and not only the currency kind. When I stopped in over winter break, I bumped into a stranger there for the first time I can remember. The Landenberg Sun has always been a place where everyone knows one another, but Ray tells me that’s changing. We have been discovered. The state-park- embraced valley, surprisingly good school system, and mere hour commute to Philadelphia have caught the suburbanite’s fickle attention. Despite the real estate bubble’s burst, a host of hulking “McMansions” pops up daily.
Next month, they’re due to start construction on a chain grocery store called Giant, not even a mile from the Sun. Everyone promises emphatically to boycott the imposter in favor of Landenberg’s true grocery, but I wonder if we can really resist the lure of lower prices and endless options. I wonder if we can really remain the same town whose motto hangs stolidly above the Sun’s cedar door: “Landenberg: you can’t get anywhere from here.”
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