I'm surprised how much it hurts....

In the next 24 hours, there is a huge possibility that Sears will be no more.

Lots of big box stores have been going out of business--but Sears? Or, as I remember it, Sears and Roebuck...that's a whole different thing.

Most of my clothes and Christmas presents came from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. It was a staple at my childhood home. And there was a Sears store in Bluefield, across two mountains from where I grew up. We'd go there often.

Sears was Amazon but in a catalog, not on line.

And the out of date catalogs were in my Grandmother Jones' outhouse to use like toilet paper--not pleasant as I remember it, and not very effective.

That outhouse was a two seat outhouse though I never used it with anyone else and couldn't imagine doing that. But it did mean you had twice as much poop and pee to put in the ground before you had to dig a new hole and move the outhouse. And there was, besides the Sears catalog, lye to throw in after you were done to dilute the smell.

But truly, though I visited many Sears stores over my lifetime, it was the Sears and Roebuck catalog that I thought of when I heard the company had one day left before total bankruptcy. The Sears in Meriden closed several years ago and I've never been in a store since. Yet the end of Sears surprises me how much it hurts.

Childhood memories are precious. And one of mine is dying.