HOLLY NADLER

508-687-9239

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

A few days ago at Reliable Market, I did what many women are bound to do when their I.Q., on the continuum from Gracie Allen all the way up to Madame Curie, comes closer to the Gracie side: I asked for $20 extra on my debit card and forgot to wait for it. It only took about 17 minutes to remember, and when I doubled back to the store, a nice lady customer getting ready to check out at the cash register that held my private twenty-dollar bill suggested I call the next morning and see if an extra amount had shown up in the till. Sure enough, the next day I reached co-owner Donna Pacheco who said, “Yes! We were 20 dollars over,” and kindly told me I could drop by at any time to pick it up.

You have to love Reliable Market. We all love Reliable Market. You can hear it in our voices. The store’s only drawback is that the narrow aisles are often jammed with people, but that’s because we, those same thronging people, all love the place, and we go there, a lot. It’s not the kind of big suburban supermarket surrounded by a parking lot the size of Latvia where you visit once a week, gritting your teeth at the sheer joylessness of the effort, stocking up two or three carts for the week. No, at Reliable, most of us townies dash in and out several times a day. You need coffee? You go get it. You might even know that later in the day you’ll want bananas for the next morning’s oatmeal. No matter, you can just chill and get them later; it’s another chance to grab some fresh air on the walk over and encounter a new set of friendly faces.

We realize we’re blessed to have a grocery store in the heart of town. Even Edgartown and Vineyard Haven, villages that recommend themselves as being more or less compleat, decades ago gave up their smack-on-Main-street grocery stores, and now they’re basically missing one of the vital elements that make a place Small Town U.S.A. Small towns, like human organ donors, don’t even realize they’ve relinquished everything down to the last kidney until the post office, hardware store, food market, laundromat and library have been relocated and suburbanized outside town proper, and there’s nothing left on the commercial block except a handful of T-shirt shops, and even those will soon go under because there’s no longer any there there.

So, at every opportunity when we run into any of the Pachecos, we should insist they hold their hands to their hearts and swear they’ll keep the grocery store in the family for another 19 generations, and if they do ever wish to sell, that it goes right into the deed that the place remains a grocery store, unmovable, and Reliable-ish, and if that’s not happening, then the Land Bank or the Preservation Trust needs to continue the enterprise because Small Town America is every bit as threatened as the piping plover or the pink-tailed stump frog (I made that one up).

Okay, Mrs. Pacheco, thanks again for giving me my $20 back!

In other activities . . . Come to the Christmas Bazaar, Saturday, Nov. 22 (that’s tomorrow) from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Woodside Village II, with baked goods, handmade items, Christmas crafts and secondhand treasures. Call Rita Reynolds at 508-693-3606.

And there’s another Holiday Bazaar, this one for the Friends of the Oak Bluffs Council on Aging, on Saturday, Dec. 6 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the O.B. Senior Center, with baked goods, holiday greens, chowder, chili, coffee, tea and hot chocolate. There are currently available to rent to vendors, 12 six-foot tables, for $25 a piece. Vendors with their own tables will pay a fee of $25 as well. Call Karen Achille at 508-693-0165.

From the Oak Bluffs School we’ve learned that guidance counselor Will Donly has left his post: Hail and farewell to Mr. Donly. A search has begun for the new guidance counselor.

There will be a run/walk through the state forest on Nov. 29, starting at the regional high school, to benefit the Kevin Johnson Cross Country Scholarship Fund. Registrations forms are available at the office of the Oak Bluffs School.