On Friday, the owners of the Fieldbrook Family Market announced via Facebook that the store will be closing Feb. 2.
“We hope to be opening up again soon, but as for now we are reaching uncertain territory with no guarantees,” the announcement said, rather cryptically.
Reached by phone this afternoon, owner Richard Seaman politely declined to provide any more details but reiterated that permanent closure “is not a hundred-percent certainty.”
I know I’m not alone in my fervent hope that Seaman or someone else will find a way to reopen the adorable little convenience store, because here’s the thing about the Fieldbrook Market: It’s really an essential part of the community.
For decades it has offered far more than six packs, candy bars and the staples that save residents from another long drive over the hill. The Fieldbrook Market is the gathering place for a community of less than 900 folks spread all over the surrounding hills.
My family moved to Fieldbrook in the summer of 1987, right before I started sixth grade. Back then the store was owned and operated by brothers Ron and Bill Daley, who held onto the place for 34 years before selling it to a young couple back in the early aughts. Seaman took over the business from them in October 2005.
As a kid, the Fieldbrook Market always served as the meeting spot for my friends and me. After making arrangements on the phone, I’d hop on my BMX bike and pedal a bumpy mile down gravelly roads — always either dusty or muddy — until I zoomed onto the smooth asphalt of Fieldbrook Road. Another half mile and I was at the store, where I’d prop my bike against the wall and head inside to browse the candy racks. Ten-cent boxes of Lemonheads and Red Hots were often winners, though sometimes I’d splurge and treat myself to an apple fritter.
My first Halloween in Fieldbrook, two of my friends and I dressed up as Hispanic caricatures (our hair spray-died black, mascara mustaches drawn on our upper lips) so we could lip-sync “La Bamba” at a Fieldbrook Grange talent show. (Sadly, I didn’t get the Ritchie Valens role; I was the drummer, using chopsticks to ride a hi-hat made from a round, styrofoam pizza box. Ah, the ’80s.)
When the three of us walked into Fieldbrook Market, Bill Daley insisted on taking our picture so he could post it on the wall with all the others — dozens of snapshots of local kids in their costumes, which stayed taped there for months. He and Ron knew just about everyone who walked through the door, and even if they didn’t they’d still offer friendly smiles.
Fieldbrook is small enough that residents can pretty much count on bumping into someone they know at the market. I haven’t spent nearly as much time there over the past two decades, but I’ve been back frequently enough to see that it still serves this purpose: It gives Fieldbrook folks the sense that they comprise a community rather than just a smattering of houses in the woods.
Seaman has placed less emphasis on the “store” and more on the gathering spot, booking lots of live music, hosting kids’ birthday parties, increasing the offerings at the deli, adding beers on tap and taking out an aisle of merchandise to make room for more tables and chairs. For the past four years the store has been preparing and delivering the school lunches for Fieldbrook Elementary students.
But Seaman said this afternoon that economic times have caught up with him. (Central Kitchen in McKinleyville is set to take over the school lunch production.)
Here’s hoping it’s not closed for long.
This article appears in Eureka’s New Boss.
And yes, I’ll take my own advice..
some day..
^ Shut up.
Ryan, The Fieldbrook Store is absolutely the place I have met all of my neighbors and made them into close friends. The lemonheads are a quarter now, but beyond that it remains much the same as it did when you were a kid; the after school crowd is in every day ogling candy, lose a dog? Someone probably found it and put it in the beer garden(Gorgeous sign by the way). I hope beyond hopes it isn’t gone forever. It’s my living room.
I apologize for side-tracking this thread but it was a way to get the community activists attention to the political smear campaign being conducted against me by Mitch and Eric, a political tag-team it seems sharing blogs together, Heraldo and SoHum Parlance. These two don’t like my anti-Zionist politics. They don’t like my criticisms of local Progressive politics. They don’t like my criticisms of themselves conducting intellectual fascism on their blogs, blocking opposing political viewpoints while maintaining popular blogs because they are Current Event oriented and people like to talk about current events. Good political strategy to capture Current Events category and then use the venue for political high jinks like censoring opposing viewpoints but allowing smears of the opposing viewpoint makers to stay posted. Dirty tricks. Like Mitch is especially prone to doing. Like his continuing smear job, can’t make a comment about Steve Lewis without putting the slander dart or knife in it as his last comment shows, typical of all Mitch’s comments on me, never a one pointing out all my every so positive qualities that so endear the community to me and my kind. But do read my last post on Mitch’s Heraldo to see why the community needs me and my kind, read while you can because it’s highly likely I won’t be able to post there again.
So who cares. No one with any intelligence pays any attention the windy vaporings of the people who post in blogs. It’s a tiny audience posting to itself. Blogs are nothing more than ignoramuses posting to other ignoramuses. Hardly to be taken seriously.
Tempest-in-a-teapot’s pretty much pegged it.
One big reason why tempest’s comment is stupid for putting down protesting against political censorship on community event news blogs is that you lose important community feedback information. And sometimes that costs the community big time: such as the political blocking of the homestead subdivision eco-damage by enviro and Prog control of media such as the NCJ. The NCJ has routinely used political censorship for any letters to the editor of mine or any suggestions for newsworthy pieces such as investigating the real sedimentation levels coming off homestead subdivision dirt roads. By blocking this kind of environmental protection information we have ended up with a Mattole River that is a ghost of its former self in terms of spawning grounds for salmonid species, we end up with homesteaders taking all available dry season water away from indigenous wildlife, we end up with polluted streams with pot chemicals and poisons. All this could have been avoided if protest against enviro activist misdirection were allowed to be aired in community news venues like the NCJ. Or Heraldo which started off life with a mole in the Times-Standard hence the news scoops on Heraldo at the beginning but now dead in the water with the Mitch-Eric tag-team.
It never pays to squelch the voices of the community for political reasons and people who do it should be exposed for the harm they do the community by blocking other community voices just because they don’t want to give them any chance to be heard by the community following these current event local venues. Bottom line: it’s called “democracy” all sides represented.