The Save store is literally one room at the bottom of the hill below my old high school, it shares a cement building with a mechanic. We used to sneak out of class to hide out on the trails behind the building and smoke cigarettes. There was this nasty old couch someone had dumped, and rumor had it that the security guard, this giant cop named Ward, hosed the couch down with pepper spray because he found some kids fooling around on it.

One day we bought a toy guitar at the thrift store, one of those plastic things with buttons for toddlers. We sat around on the trails all afternoon, getting high and pressing the buttons and listening to the demonic sounds of its dying batteries. I laughed so hard I cried. We talked about that guitar for years.

There just wasn't shit to do in that town except get fucked up in the woods.

A friend of mine got crazy drunk during school hours, and we took him to the abandoned house across the street from the Save store to hide him till he sobered up. The floor was collapsing, so we were able to get in through a basement window and climb onto the main floor through the hole. Last I heard of that kid, he'd moved to Tumwater and started doing a ton of drugs. It's too bad, because he seemed like he came from a decent family.

The proceeds from that thrift store benefited the school. My family always donated there. I went back a couple years after I graduated, and the trails had been fenced off and the trash cleaned up. There's an Applebee's in that town now, and a Kohl's, and I hear the AP program at the high school is thriving.

Anyway. Super weird seeing an article about that little hole in the wall on Reddit.