A fond farewell: Food Front’s final chapter

Empty store offered a history lesson of sorts for board member

“It’s a closed business—how hard could it be?”

I nearly chuckled to myself when I submitted my Food Front board of directors application, asking the universe a rhetorical question that would be answered loudly, again and again in the year and a half to follow.

The echoing laughter of the universe at my uneducated optimism memorably continued when the reality of the tasks at hand set in upon my cursory walk-through of the eerily empty store. Have you ever been in a decedent’s home before? Particularly, somebody who lived inconsistently, perhaps even chaotically, in the same place, for over 40 years? It is a sight to be held; a puzzle with no instruction manual, map, or leader for deference. No trail guide. No teacher. I had entered the heart of a community and hoped to extract what value I could for the sake of that community.

Filled with equal parts dread and overwhelming curiosity, I set out to put together a picture of life as it was, pieced together through strewn-about records, collections, art and tasks left undone. There was mystery afoot. I didn’t set out to solve it but to unravel through slowness what haste concealed.

While the major historical themes of Food Front have been shared through the “autopsy” and “eulogy” reports I released earlier this year, so many of the peculiar pieces of the co-op’s inimitable personality have stuck with me as if they were formative memories of my own.

On one of the many days spent in the FFC offices, I went through an entire folder filled to capacity with lewd and silly drawings that human resources staff had confiscated from the store’s bulletin boards over time. Zrrrrp. I watched with amusement as illustrious four-letter words and censored bits disappeared into the shredder.

Another day, sorting through the emotionally heightened internal conferrals, redlines and external negotiations relating to the workforce’s pending union contract. I went through documentation of employees openly navigating newly available information on gender-affirming care in the 1990s—an important piece of oft-private cultural history that I feel privileged to have read.

A notebook filled on alternating pages with order notes for bulk pantry items and heavily shaded pen drawings with comic book quality action heroes and ominous, side-eyed villains was difficult to forget. While disgusting then—though comical in hindsight—I recall the desk drawer with an uncountable quantity of grease-stained bacon wrappers. The employee evidently regularly ate bacon at their desk and bafflingly tucked away the waxy deli paper waste in their drawer.

Some of the most urgent board meeting and management minutes showed the brainstorming power of the diverse team—from heavenly-minded contributions to more grounded ideas of closing the store—all scribbled in different handwriting in the margins of agendas. And how were there seemingly infinite tiny rubber finger puppets everywhere? I paged through the binder of individuals who had been eighty-sixed from the store, and I was inexplicably disappointed that I did not recognize a single person.

Zrrrrp. Into the shredder, again.

Did anybody imagine that all of these unconnected pieces of their lives would be reviewed by somebody like me far off in the future? Probably not. I think of the prominently labeled and aptly named room-size deli cooler: “Christopher Walk-In.”

History came knocking, and I am glad to have answered the door. We can’t always hold on to great things forever, but we can figure out what made them great—and incorporate those priorities into our future plans. Food Front served as a library, a museum, a school, a kitchen. A public square. Occasionally, a boxing ring. A corner staple, the heart of a community, and the home to unimaginably vast volumes of core memories over many decades. While I am sure that the people who left these mementos behind have changed since their tenure and store closure, these precious recollections of their place in Food Front’s history will continue to be a part of our, and my, social identity for years to come.

I proudly affixed a found “I <3 Food Front” bumper sticker to my car, which felt ironic to do only years after the store’s closure. But isn’t that life? Sometimes it’s easier to love things so fully when they’re no longer with us.

Kate Fulton spent hours in the closed grocery store, poring over documents and sorting items for archives.

Kate Fulton is a writer and litigation defense paralegal living in the woods outside of Portland. She is often accompanied by animals in her quest to improve the world around her.