Not far from the levee in the old Red River trading town of Alexandria, just off Bolton Avenue, there’s an old corner grocery store. Longtime residents remember it as Gengo’s Store, a family business that served the hard-working families of the neighborhood in the days before air-conditioning and the internet. The kind of place a child could have been sent on a hot summer day to pick up a pound of sugar or coffee or rice needed right away, between the weekly grocery deliveries.
Folks still wander in, but instead of hard candy or a Tootsie Roll they are treated to an hour of relief from the stress of modern life. A place where objects of the past have been lovingly accumulated and find new, appreciative homes.