It’s 1990 and Rubber Bands has closed. Not that it was ever really called Rubber Bands. That’s just what my brother and sister and I used to call it. The store on the corner of West Pratt and North California was really called Roband’s, but it hadn’t been Roband’s since it was taken over by Melvin Schoenwald in the early 70s and became a Sun Discount Drugs. But Rubber Bands is what we called it anyway. And so did a lot of the other kids who went to Boone School and KINS Hebrew School.
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My sister bought her first pack of Razzles there. She also used to buy packages of Clark’s Fruit Punch gum, and Adams’ Sour Apple and Black Jack, and Beech-Nut Fruit Stripe, and made the gum wrappers into braided chains. I remember getting a Willie Mays and a Dick Allen card in one pack of Topps bubble-gum cards I bought there and racing home to hide them in my room. I wouldn’t have traded them for anything.
December 30, 1989, was the last time I went to Rubber Bands. “It’s impossible to be a small businessman in this world anymore,” said Melvin Schoenwald as he stood behind the prescriptions counter. Men were loading empty freezers into a pickup truck that was waiting outside on California. Orthodox Jewish kids were sifting through the half-empty candy shelves, and an elderly lady was blowing her nose and looking through the get-well cards in the store’s Sociability Center.
“Do you have the tablets you use to check for sugar in the urine?” he asked.
Behind the man you could hear the sound of change jingling as Schoenwald helped lift up a candy shelf, revealing a cache of dust, fuzz, and stray coins: a few pennies, a dime, and a Ben Franklin half-dollar.
“Hey, nobody’s working the register? I’ll ring you up.”
“Take care.” Max started to shuffle out the door. He didn’t turn around.
