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After 56 years, Gene’s Food Store in Basile closes its doors for the last time.
by R. Reese Fuller
December 27, 2000

Joe Burge looks menacing sitting on a barstool behind the counter. He wears a red T-shirt with large dice and cursive white letters that read, “Hi-Rollers — Beau Knows Zydeco.” Next to the cash register sits an open can of Dr. Pepper and a glass ashtray full of discarded butts. He flicks the ashes from his Marlboro Light into the trash can at his feet. A sawed-off lever from a posthole digger rests against the wall, a deterrent for arguments out in the parking lot.

It’s a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon in Basile. The front and back doors are open. Occasionally a breeze sweeps through and slams the back screen door repeatedly. An old radio above the cash register softly bleeds out classic rock hits from KZMZ in Alexandria.

A barefoot boy in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt runs through the front door over the worn painted concrete floor to a cooler. A leaf clings to his hair. After retrieving a can of Coke, he makes his way back across the room and places the can and two quarters from his clenched fist on the counter.

“Mr. Joe, when’s it going to be the last day?” he asks.

“Today’s the last day, boy,” Joe says. He takes his time getting up and looks down over the counter. “I’m going to close this afternoon. You see that big ol’ candy cane over there? Get you one. I’ll give you one.”

The boy doesn’t move for a moment, stands frozen as if he doesn’t understand what he’s heard. He turns around and grabs one of the two sticks of candy.

“There you go,” Joe says. “That’s yours. Merry Christmas.”

The boy cautiously walks out of the half-empty store. He doesn’t say a word and looks bak at Joe over his shoulder.

In 1944, Joe’s grandfather, Dallas Vizena, bought the little grocery store on the corner of W. Stagg and N. Green avenues. He changed the name to Vizena’s General Mercantile and sold everything from flour to underwear. Joe’s father, Gene Burge, bought the store in 1969 and changed the name to Gene’s Food Store, and ran it until he passed away in 1990. After working in the oil fields, Joe bought the store from his mother that year.

For the last decade, the store has been open seven days a week, including holidays, from 6:30 in the morning to 8 at night. After years of trying to keep the business afloat, Joe decided to close the doors for good and to take a job at the Grand Casino Coushatta in Kinder where his wife, Gloria, has worked for the last six years.

“Tomorrow will be the first day off I’ve had off in 10 years,” Joe says. “I’m going to cook me a steak. Then I’m going to sit in front of the TV and cuss the Saints. I’m going to be like everybody else in Louisiana for a change.”

Joe’s son, Brian, walks into the store and tells his father that he’s just stopping by on his way to Lafayette. Before he leaves, Brian pats his father on the shoulder, looks him in the eye and says, “I’m proud of you, old man.”

While Joe admits that it was a painful decision to close down the store, he also sees it as an opportunity. “The family business had a 56-year run. I think that’s pretty groovy. I’m glad I had it. I’m glad my kids had it. But it’s like this: I’m finished with it. It’s time for Joe Burge to live like a normal person — whatever that is.”

A few minutes later Gloria arrives with Joe’s lunch, a hamburger with everything from the local Exxon station. When she talks about closing the store, she’s ambivalent.

“I’m happy one minute,” she says, “and crying the next. When Joe and I met, this store was here. When we had our first grandchild, this store was here. There are a lot of memories here, a lot to let go of. It’s just time to start a new chapter.”

Outside the store, there’s a wail of sirens in the distance.

“There must be a bad wreck down the street,” Gloria says and walks outside to the gravel parking lot.

Led by a police cruiser, a fire engine crawls down Stagg Avenue, lights flashing and sirens blaring.

“It’s Santa!” Gloria exclaims as she looks down the street with a hand shielding her eyes from the sun and the other holding a lit cigarette. “Every year Santa comes to town on the fire truck and makes his way to the American Legion hall. All the kids go there to see him.”

The fire engine passes the store and Santa Claus hangs off the back end of the truck, waving. The lucky boy with the free candy cane keeps up with the truck on his bicycle. “I started crying about Santa this morning,” Gloria says. “I’ll never get to see him again from this store.”

Eugene “Bugg” Burge, Joe’s brother and an anesthetist at Savoy Medical Center in Mamou, enters the store with his son Jordan. He’s there to help clear off what little is left on the shelves and to help drink a case of Miller Lite when the store closes. They won’t crack a beer, though, until their other brother Brent, a pharmacist at Savoy Medical Center, shows up to help.

Joe stands behind the counter and asks Bugg about the ducks he bagged in the morning on his hunting excursion. While they talk, the fluorescent lights overhead dim for a split second and return to normal.

“Hey, Bugg” Joe says. “Did you see that?”

“What was that?”

“It’s been doing that all day. That’s probably old Gene telling us to get out!”

While Bugg doesn’t like to see the store close, he says, “I’m glad for Joe. He’s been struggling for the last three years. Everyone’s closing around here, and the economy is supposed to be doing great. We’ve learned a lot of lessons here. I’m not sad about it. It’s all good memories.”

Joe adds his economic views: “It’s like when you build a house. You don’t start at the roof. You start at the foundation. For years the foundation of local economies were the mom-and-pops, but now that’s disappearing. The small town’s foundation is disappearing.”

“Joe,” Bugg says, “you need to make a sign that says, ‘I’m gone.’”

Joe tears off a piece of butcher paper and writes on it in red marker:

Closed for good!

I’m living the life of a normal person.

Joe

aka Dr Feelgood

Joe holds the paper up and inspects his work. He places it back on the counter and adds, “Thanks for the memories.”

He smiles.

“Now it’s done,” he says.

Brent pulls up in the parking lot and Bugg yells, “There’s Brent right there. Let’s drink!”

While Joe hangs the sign up in the front window, Gloria instructs her daughter Tracy to sweep the floor and her son-in-law Tony to help divide up the food left on the shelves between the brothers. While they clean, a couple of customers straggle in and Joe hands them each a trash bag, telling them to help themselves. They help themselves as vultures would to a carcass.

The shelves are nearly bare. Only a few canned goods, jugs of vegetable oil, and boxes of salt remain. Gloria stands by a deep freezer of ice cream reserved for her grandson Nick and cries.

“Gloria, stop that,” Brent says as he sips on a beer. “It’s supposed to be good.”

Gloria retorts, “We’re giving this shit away, and they won’t take it all. How are we supposed to sell it?”

Everyone laughs, and Joe still stands behind the counter.

“Joe, get away from that counter,” Bugg yells. “You don’t have to do that anymore.”

“It’s a force of habit,” Joe says.

It’s 4:47 p.m., and the lights dim again.

“It’s Gene,” Joe says. “It’s time to go.”

Bugg instructs the family to get close together for a group hug. With their arms around one another they yell in unison, “1-2-3, Joe!”

It’s 5 p.m. and Joe locks up the front doors. The family stands around outside while Joe and Tracy place a long metal bar across the door and padlock it.

The wind picks up and the sun begins to set. The balmy afternoon is turning into a bitterly cold evening. Gloria is still crying when she gets into her car. The family members get into their cars and pull out of the parking lot.

Joe wears a baseball cap that reads “Stone Cold” with an embroidered skeleton shooting the bird with both hands. He shows no expression as he hops into his two-tone Chevy 1500 truck and pulls out of the parking lot for the last time.

The two bare light bulbs over the front porch blink one more time.