Adios Alvey's

It's hard to believe- Alvey's Grocery Store in Catharpin, Virginia has gone out of business. I know it ranks low in the list of recent economic failures, but Alvey's was a mainstay in the small community for 'as long as anybody could remember', literal truth in this case since the store opened in 1875. They survived the Great Depression and two World Wars; but they couldn't survive this economy.

When I return home, I get a sense of how bad things are getting in parts of the US- there are at least four foreclosures on my mother's block right now and more than I can count in her county. Places like Haymarket, Virginia, became enclaves for huge houses that their owners could hardly afford after the tech programmers got sick of trying to squeeze into the Dulles Corridor, and the foreclosures have been growing in number for at least the past two or three years now. People who are hanging on to their homes by their fingernails are not likely to go to the small mom and pop grocery store when the big chain store down the street is cheaper. And a population on the move doesn't make for loyal customers anyway.

Places like Alvey's just can't compete with the box stores- their costs run higher because they can't buy in the same sort of bulk or monopolize suppliers like the chains. This is what ultimately killed them, although the downturn hasn't helped. But, they were struggling for some time. The general area has become a mecca of huge stores and oceanic parking lots- it's almost unbelievably ugly outside of the protected Bull Run battlefield. Increasingly, I think that nobody in their right mind would live there- having closed the store, the Alvey's are likely moving out of the town that an Alvey named.

It's a shame too because they are one of the nicest families I know. The joy of shopping at Alvey's was that their family was often in the store and they always had a kind word for you. When my grandmother passed away, the family sent an enormous floral display to the funeral because she was a friend. I worked there off and on for years. They always treated me well, and when I stopped working at the store to go off to Canada, they gave me an enormous ''care package''. I could go on and on, but the point is that it's hard to see good people going through tough times.

And I get the feeling that we're going to be seeing more of that in the future. This economic difficulty isn't going to sink the Wal-Marts of the world, but it's going to raise hell with the small business people who have already been struggling to keep afloat. It's already nearly impossible to explain to the sort of fat, stupid suburbanites that live in my mother's neighborhood why anyone would be willing to pay a few cents more to shop at a store where you could spend an hour having a conversation with the guy in the meat department or the kid in produce. And it's just going to get worse when everyone's squeezing their pennies.

But, let's dream a little- here's hoping that the Alvey's start a new business wherever they land.