A song from the movie Casablanca goes, “…the fundamental things apply as time goes by.”  Time is the subject of many song lyrics. Famously, Mick Jagger sang that “time was on his side”. Time is a hard concept for me grasp. I cannot comprehend what Hawking or Einstein had to say about time. In fact, the laws of Physics don’t come to me easily at all. As a young child, I thought chocolate milk might came from brown cows. But wait, that would be Biology? or Zoology?

One way I can understand  the passage of time is to see it through the history of the site of our former family business. You’ll see the original building with the beautiful arched windows in the photo above. The photo at the top left includes my dad. He is is the little guy in the front wearing a tie and a snazzy hat and barely taller that that huge horseshoe of flowers!

My grandfather’s journey to America will be a familiar one to many whose ancestors came here in the major wave of immigration from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. He arrived in Savannah via life in Romania, England and New York City. He was bright and ambitious and opened a small grocery store. His family grew to a wife and four children. By the 1930’s, he was ready to build a his own building. The business was very progressive for its day. It was a super market! Not just dry goods or produce or meat only, but all groceries under one roof. It was one of the first, if not the first, supermarkets in the city. The exquisite art deco building, marked on the exterior with decorative black tile, was built at the corner of Bull and 40th Streets. At that time the site was pretty close to the “suburbs” here in Savannah.

He called the business David’s Supermarket, named for his son David (who in addition to being a grocer, was a fabulously talented artist).  The business was, for the next 40 or so years, part of a thriving neighborhood that once included a soda shop, a furniture store, a camera shop, an office supply store, an appliance store and even a movie theatre. Another anchor for the area was the Starland Dairy just across the street from the supermarket. 

By the 1950’s the fancy building exterior was considered dated and a modern facade was added. The business eventually employed my father, another uncle, my brother and myself. 

The supermarket was sold in the 1980’s to another local family,  then sold again to a chain of discount grocery stores. The building was completely remodeled by the chain and unrecognizable as what we still thought of as “ours”. The area underwent a cycle of decline and the building was abandoned and up for sale.Today the neighborhood is once again vibrant and enjoying a wonderful resurgence as the Starland District. The building my grandfather built 90 years ago has been purchased and is under reconstruction.  I am thrilled. It will be wonderful to see new life on the spot where so much of our family  history existed. The poet Robert Frost said he could sum up all of life in 3 words, “It goes on.” So time really does fly and it definitely marches on.