The Last General Store

 There was a place on Front Street in Red Bank called Kislin’s. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen anywhere, before or since. They sold boots, tools, camping gear, basketballs, model airplanes, kerosene heaters, dolls: an astonishing array of wildly different merchandise not put in the store by any particular category or any discernable arrangement. It was kind of dark in there. They had a couple of light fixtures way up in the ceiling and this vast cavern full of shelves and piles of stuff apparently put down wherever there was room. Little League uniforms were over there by the varnish. An old guy, Mr. Kislin (?) sat – I thought he must have been crippled, because he never moved – and a guy named Bob, his son (?) went and got whatever you asked for when you came in. Browsing was definitely out. A hatchet? Be right back. Gardening gloves?  Hold on. Ostensibly, Kislin’s had started out as a sporting goods store, but it had morphed into a sort of wacky department store for everything no one else in town carried. As if the old man was listening every time somebody asked for something and then ordered it so he wouldn’t miss a sale. So that’s where my Mom took me for my Chinos.

Dickies, they were called. Cotton-and-Dacron, wash-and-wear, straight leg, tan pants. Kislin’s kept them piled up against the tent poles. Nothing high-falutin’ about Dickies, but I wouldn’t wear anything else. Forget Haggar, forget the department store boys’ wear, forget everything else. I went to Kislin’s for Dickies and that was that, until probably eighth grade, or until Kislin’s went out of business. The old man died I guess, and Bob opened up a real sporting goods store in the Eatontown Mall. He called it Bob’s.