La Vida Local
Irregular Notes on West End Life
Big Yellow Taxi
By Rosanne Graef
Change can be very, very sad and very, very difficult. Especially when it’s needlessly and heedlessly dropped upon you. Such is the untimely closure of the West End’s Fresh Approach Meat Market.
People may say, “Come on, it’s only a neighborhood market” — or laundromat, or brand, or beer, or TV show about a fictional bar “where everybody knows your name.” But some seemingly commonplace changes are so profound that their effects seep through a community for years.
West Enders and “Beyonders” were shocked at the sudden closure of Fresh Approach Market.
First and foremost, we are deeply concerned for the welfare of the owners, Chet & Peg Knights, and their employees. I hope they all know the depth of gratitude the neighborhood has for them always being there. Through financial downs and ups, through Covid, through heat and cold and dark of night… Knowing that there would be a breakfast sandwich, a $1.50 cup of coffee, and a little chit-chat always made the trip to Fresh Approach worthwhile.
But the farther-reaching changes of the loss of a shared place or experience (and Fresh Approach was definitely an experience) are deeply personal and emotional. There are the people, workers, and fellow customers, that you saw often, maybe daily, for as much as five minutes at a time and you’ll probably never see them again. There’s the endless collection of Schlitz memorabilia that you never throughly explored. There’s the pig cutout on the wall. The mini-grocery shopping cart. The guitar in the café that you never took a photo of.
At least lots of us are lucky enough to have lived here at the right time to have socked away those memories that we can drag out years from now and say, “Remember when…”
And for those who don’t recognize the reference in this article’s title, it is the real name of the “paved paradise” song. As Joni Mitchell sang:
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?”
Oh, and where can I get one of those Hershey’s mint chip ice cream sandwiches, now?
