Let Us Assume And Then ... Let Me Remember

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Let us assume that this store replaced

Billy Blake's Department Store
in Stonybrook, two years after
I graduated college.

Billy Blake was a box store

that discount-minded shoppers

in eastern Long Island cherished

for much too brief a period of time.

The Blake stores existed for no more
than five years, ending in 1973. 
 

The  "A and P"  is equally defunct

but not until after one and a half centuries

of providing groceries for

one and a half gazillion shoppers.

Long Island hipsters

preferred to believe that
the Billy Blake Department Stores

were named for

William Blake,

the 18th century

poet and mystic.

For more than

three and a half centuries.

William Blake has provided

inspiration and poetic pulchritude

for three and a half gazillion

people.

He will continue to inspire

our inner poets for the next

three and a half centuries.

Here is another image 

of the visionary poet:

Poetic-minded youth

might be more inclined 

to quote Jim Morrison

who named his band

THE DOORS

because the mystical lead singer

was inspired by this quote.

However,

this page would not exist

if it were not for another 

famous Rock n' Roller:

Neil Young!

+

A confession from someone

who spent thirty-two years

 on Long Island:

My most vivid memory

of  William Blake's poetry  

is inferior to my memory

of Billy Blake's store.

At a poetry reading

in 1968,  I recited

a William Blake poem

while doing jumping jacks.

Do not ask why

but the idea was very inventive

while the execution

was embarrassingly bad.

 May 18, 1969

was my twentieth birthday

and the most memorable gift

was given to me by my father

in the parking lot of  

Billy Blake's Department Store.

Neil Young had released

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

less than a week before

my father begifted his son.

 

On December 10, 2016

(approximately four hours ago)

Mrs. CarPeo pleasantly surprised me

by playing Neil Young's masterpiece

on the car stereo.

I responded like

a crazy horse with memories...

and begat all of the above.

Thank you for reading this.

PS
Mrs. CarPeo grew up in Brooklyn
on the Western end of Long Island.
She knew nothing about
Billy Blake's Department Store
but when she worked for Abrams Books,
she designed a William Blake book:

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