I really like writing about Nolan's Neighbors. Actually, I don't know much about the history of this convenience store, which is part of a chain in several nearby communities, but I'll keep adding more as I learn it. What I can tell you now is that the Nolans are good people, and that they run a convenience store that is a lot more than that! Nolan's is unique in Ashfield, as far as I'm concerned (and I've been in two other Neighbors branch stores!). In addition to being very much a part of the contemporary scene of quick pickup groceries and other casual shopping items, it's a fine village gathering place. They make very good sandwiches and submarines in their deli, offer a very nice selection of wines, videos, village crafts, plus a snacks-lunch-newspaper-coffee-drinking counter for people who want to hang out - plus being hospitable to kids of all ages who want their "fixes" of ice cream - or whatever!
This store, as I said, is - like Ashfield Hardware & Supply Co. - a major gathering place for Ashfield people whom one is not likely to meet anywhere else! People tend to become members of groups who derive their sense of belonging through their compatibility with other members of their particular group. Well, Neighbors isn't like that. I get to meet and chat with people I might not ever see except when I shop there. Working people - young guys in pickups dropping in for coffee and a sandwich; Mohawk Regional High School kids who've been dropped off in the village from their big yellow school buses; farm women in their family trucks who have run out of something or need more gas; people with long beards and shaggy hair; old men sitting at the counter sipping their coffee and glancing at the Ashfield News, the West County News, the Greenfield Recorder or the Union News; anyone at all, in fact, who needs a few groceries and has a letter to mail or a box to check at the post office. And that's a lot of people!
Before it was Nolans', it was Day's. When I was much younger and first saw Elmer's beginning to be up-staged by this convenience store style of shopping, I deplored the trend, but you can't live in the past, mourning the changing of old ways of doing things. My hope is that if one can pay attention to the value of the new which may at least partly take the place of the old - and, quite often, may actually offer something new and valuable in the exchange, then the past needn't dominate the present quite so much. Nolan's is an excellent example of this principle!