The Last Shift at Halloran's

Halloran's Hardware closed on a Saturday in March, after sixty-one years on Front Street, and nobody made a speech. I had imagined the last day as something dramatic, with a crowd and perhaps a newspaper photographer, and it turned out to be neither dramatic nor crowded. I had worked there after school for almost two years, long enough to know where the brass hinges were and not long enough to understand why anyone needed eleven kinds. The sign in the front window said EVERYTHING MUST GO, in letters Mr. Halloran had painted himself, and beneath it, in much smaller letters added the next morning, he had written "within reason."