VANISHED STORES IN DOWNTOWN PAWTUCKET

I WORKED AT TWO OF THEM,
                          BUT I SHOPPED AT ALL OF THEM.

Maybe I should just make a list but I am sure that I would miss so many. So let's be satisfied with those that I can recall and that  I actually patronized.
Where to begin--for me it is the early to late fifties and ROUTE 95 has not yet devastated the city and its surroundings.
So I will include the shops around the Main Street  Bridge. 
Foremost for me was THE BRIDGE BAKERY.  It sat on the 
downstream side of Main Street and the east side of the bridge. So it was for me the last port of call.  I would stop there when I had decided that I would walk home and could use the bus fare to buy a treat to sustain me while I walked home.
The store was an English bakery and it specialized in shortbread, and eccles cakes, and fig  and apple squares. I could buy only one and the choice was difficult but I usually chose the apple squares.  I would have liked to work there but I never did,
Walking up Main Street after the bank buildings  on the corner  of Main and East Ave I reached another temple of greatness--THE FANNY FARMER  CANDY store. I went in there  just to smell it as I walked by. They also offered free samples--I ONLY TOOK ONE!  This place was crowded in the week before Easter and Xmas. My Aunt Anna always got us Fanny Farmer Easter eggs for our baskets.

Continuing up Main Street I often ducked into Woolworth's Five and Dime. What attracted me there was that they had a section of the store where they kept bright parakeets and canaries and finches. I always loved birds and I went in just to watch the birds and pick out the ones I would buy if I could. They also lured me with their soda counter and excellent French fries which I would have with a vanilla coke. A little slice of heaven.  Next  door was GRANTS with its great selection of  cloth remnants that my mother liked to poke around in. But I often wandered around by myself.  I would have errands to do  for my mother, but as my  birthday gift when I turned seven I was allowed to take the bus downtown alone. My sister Janie only came with me if we were going to a movie.
Next door and with a big bus stop in front was Shartenbergs. That was my mother's favorite store but held no charms for me.
The charm of Shartenbergs was their windows. Since all of us waiting for buses were a sort of captive audience, they changed the windows often and  put some thought into them. I recall one that was  done to celebrate the  Coronation of Queen Elizabeth.
I must have already had my Irish up--thanks, no doubt, to my mother's telling of Irish history.  I resented the window to the English monarchy --or maybe I was displaying the Jenckes legacy in my bloodline because they were fierce  anti-monarchists. Joseph Jenks founder of Pawtucket, supposedly joked with his foundry workmen that he would like to play ball with the head of the  decapitated  KING CHARLES I.
I'll leave it there --after all I  am  glad to  write about childhood and the  working experience  came when I was 16 . Maybe we will talk about that later I worked in two stores--THE SORORITY SHOP and  THE APEX.

SOUL LIBERTY that WE CAN NEVER LOSE

"If I will that he tarry until I come, what is it to thee? 


This passage in the New Testament is one of those in which  the tone of Jesus' question is  not easy to interpret. I think Jesus is cautioning about the primacy of  soul liberty  and the uniqueness and inscrutability of God's Plan for each of us. SOUL LIBERTY  is the human aspect of God's Freedom.  When I first heard  such phrases as SOUL LIBERTY, Priesthood of all Believers, and God's freedom, they sent a thrill through me and I knew that in some profound way they were statements of TRUTH.

I heard them spoken in a positive way when my Aunt Grace took me to the  Baptist Church, and later in a not positive way I heard them listed as some of the  attributes of Protestant  denominations in a Catholic Church History class.

When I discovered more about my own heritage as a Jenckes and direct descendant of Joseph Jenks, one of the founders and supporters of the  FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH in AMERICA and the life and  beliefs of Rhode Island's  inspired founder Roger Williams, I was each time thrilled that I had  heard the sacred words liberty and freedom in a religious context. 

I understood better the  attraction of Islam when I  learned that their faith contained a list of the 99 Attributes of GOD. When I read them aloud,  I find them to be comforting and to bring  me a  greater sense of  the largeness of the Divine outpouring and the smallness of the human  capacity. They make a wonderful daily aid to contemplation. You will see if you try to read through them, that some new revelation will stop you and hold you at a different spot each day.

That is something that we mortals forget--the distance in every attribute between us and God. And the difference lies in both quantity and quality. We cannot know  what He knows. We cannot fathom the heights of his knowledge or the depths of His  compassion and mercy.  To  say we can is like saying that an ant can  know and feel as much as we do.  There can be no comparisons and often times we cannot even comprehend why something happens in our world. We do not have the large plan and we certainly are not directing or guiding the working out of that plan.

We do have great dignity and immense importance  but that is bestowed on us and not the result of anything that we do or learn or say or make or destroy.
Our dignity and our importance comes from one sublime fact --GOD MADE US  and each of us  contains the IMAGE OF GOD
IMAGO DEI . This was not earned --it was given to us with our souls and has been ours and will be ours for all eternity.

WHAT'S IT TO YOU?