I love a good grocery store as much as the next guy, but you can never have too many megachurches

Every time I drive on 20th Street in Joplin, I think of Dillon's.

When I first moved to this city almost 15 years ago. I shopped regularly at Dillon's. It had the feel of a grocery store, carried many of my favorite brands that were not on the shelves at the Wal-Mart Supercenter and it was also the store where the families of my students shopped and for someone who has never been much on the social scene, this was a way of being a part of the community.

That all came to an end May 22, 2011, when the tornado ripped through Joplin and took Dillon's with it.

The company teased us with its declaration that it would return and it even went as far as to have a pharmacy on Range Line for a while, but in the end, with two Wal-Mart Supercenters, plans in place for the opening of Wal-Mart Neighborhood stores, Price Cutter and Food4Less here, it was easier for Dillon's to say "thanks for the memories" and that is exactly what the company did.

After the tornado ,with both of the grocery stores that served my area of the city, Dillon's and the 15th Street Wal-Mart, gone, I had to find a replacement.. For a while, I bought some items at Target, which was handy, but really no substitute and then I reluctantly went to the 7th Street Wal-Mart Supercenter.

I am sure there are many fine people who work there and shop there, but I did not care for the store and the parking lot was, and is, a nightmare.

And then I started going to Price Cutter.

Though it was a little out of the way, I kept going there at least once a week for the next several years.

Price Cutter, like Dillon's, was what I considered to be a real grocery store. Friendly, smiling, helpful people were manning the checkout lines, not the soulless, job-stealing automated checkouts at the Wal-Mart Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets.

The store carried not only many of the brands I loved from Dillon's, but also had a choice like the Price Cutter where I did my shopping when I lived in Carthage.

There are even people there who know I write the Turner Report and they don't hold it against me.

In less than two weeks, this grocery store, like Dillon's and like so many others that have served Joplin over the years, will become a memory.

The property owners have opted to sell to the James River mega-church operation.

People who have given years of their lives to working for Price Cutter will be on the unemployment line. Those who have pushed their carts down aisles that were actually spacious enough to move comfortably will have to find another place to buy their canned goods and produce.

I would be the last person to say that Joplin does not have its share of incorrigible sinners who couldn't benefit from a little religion.

Perhaps it is sacriligious, but I have to ask- Do we really need to have a Springfield megachurch on Maiden Lane? Couldn't they have built the church on the Memorial Hall parking lot?

I will miss Price Cutter, as I am sure many who are reading these words will, but at least we will not have to look back and wonder if we could have saved the store by shopping there a few more times.

It is not the community's lack of devotion that will close the doors at Price Cutter forever.

I suppose I shouldn't keep wallowing in nostalgia.

Who am I to stand in the way of progress?