Jim

Name: Jim

Occupation:

Decade Born: 1960’s

Location:

“Fall down seven times, stand up eight.”

Tell me a favorite memory.

We had a family grocery store that catered to the African Americans during the days of segregation. That was where I had the most fun. It was a very lively place. We had lots of people who worked there who were like extended family so that was always a fun, happy place to go to. The strange thing is that store appears in my dreams all the time. It’s the most common theme in my dreams. It might be current day, but it’s still there. In reality, the building’s still there, but the store shut down 20-something years ago. But that’s the place I was happiest as a child and I try to duplicate that. Whenever I have a dream that takes place there, it’s usually the start of a good day. I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking about why I have those dreams.

You mentioned that the store shut down about 20 years ago, how did that feel?

Oh it was a loss of a key thing. It was kind of like losing your childhood home or something like that and my parents moved out of my childhood home about 6 years ago and I miss that, but not as much as I miss the store just because I grew up in there. It was a much larger extended family. Home was great and I enjoyed that, but there were fewer people there. It wasn’t as bright. It wasn’t as lively. I still have day dreams about going back and buying it and doing something else with it, but trying to recreate it isn’t practical and would be an incredibly bad investment. I keep thinking about reopening it and it would be- it used to be W.B. Hussey General Merchandise- but making it into W.B.Hussey Barbeque. But I think it’d be an incredibly bad business venture. Aberdine’s not a poor town, but it’s certainly not the wealthiest. In recent years, there’s a lot of failed businesses and, like a lot of small towns, boarded up buildings. But it’s a beautiful town. It’s got a lot Annabelle and Victorian architecture, but it takes a lot of money to maintain so unfortunately a lot of that has gone by the wayside.