When I was five, a black and white striped awning was the only thing that occupied my mind. Lifeless in my kindergarten class, I aimlessly subtracted with my fingers, dreaming of the late afternoon where I could sit in the shade of the lined overhang feeling the brash coolness of a metal grated seat pressed against my sunburnt legs. I dreamt of a half-melted popsicle in hand as the yellow glow of a boars-head meat sign bounced off my skin from the glass window of a two-story brick home outfitted as a market I knew as, Maggie and John’s.

            Stepping away from the confines of the classroom and leaping from the elevated staircase of a yellow school bus, it was only moments before I was transfixed by the checkered flooring and layered walls of food that made the market magical. The blow of the overhead air conditioner greeted me only moments before the voice of Maggie, the store owner. As I was pulled into the tunneling room of mismatching tables, dairy refrigerators, and Pittsburgh Penguins memorabilia, I stepped only on the black tiles before gluing my hands to a slanted glass display which fogged with my heavyset breath overwhelmed by the candy choices in front of me: Laffey Taffy’s, Snickers, Milky Ways, Three Musketeers, Skittles, Tootsie Rolls. I looked up for a moment noticing the ivory grin plastered on Maggie’s face as she questioned, “Will it be a slushy today?” And in that brief moment, the memory of the candy escaped me and before I could assess my choices, I was chewing on a red straw as a blue raspberry Slush Puppy chilled the back of my throat.

            I exited, sitting in the shade of the awning, both hands gripping the cup bearing an image of a cartoon dog sticking out its tongue and dressed in winter clothes. I peered through the glass doorway at the meat counter, the focal point of the store, and at Maggie’s husband, John. I watched as John greeted the older customers, pulling chunks of red meat from the deli counter and turning to face a wall of grease-stained order tickets. Using a meat slicer, John chiseled blocks of ham and turkey before dressing sandwiches with immense layers of lettuce and tomatoes, out turning orders in carefully wrapped pieces of parchment.

I watched as mailmen, neighbors, and businessmen came and went from the store, admiring Maggie and John, until my mouth was stained blue and the sun disappeared behind the corner market. Before I left my seat I already began dreaming of what flavor slushy I would have the next day.

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I don’t remember quite when, but at some point, I learned that the corner market I believed to be Maggie and John’s was actually called Frick Park Market. It was around this same time that my dreams of artificially flavored desserts and drinks also began to fade. When the day drew to an end I no longer visited the market, but rather walked by it like an old friend, turning my face to acknowledge it, yet proceeding my own way.

Occasionally I would see Maggie or John sitting below the awning which was clearly labeled, in bolded white letters, “Frick Park Market”. John, with his graying hair, sat in his everyday attire of blue jeans and a tan button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbow. He faced the road, ankle on knee, smoking a cigarette, waving nonchalantly when I passed. Always separate from one another, Maggie would also smoke outside, although she tried to hide the cigarette behind her polished red fingertips whenever neighbors passed by. When I tried to slip by, she never said a word but smiled with her uninviting big front two teeth stained the color of butter. John's image soon became inseparable from the pungent smell of nicotine and although I could never quite figure out what it was, Maggie always bothered me and drew my attention to the tainted image of the corner store I once found magical.

            The front glass door was now barred by a steel grate, what I believed to be an attempt to hide the image of shelves of food now slanted, breaking away from the wall, and the floor which you could no longer tell the difference between the black tiles and the white. With each day I noticed something new, the milk crates left sitting on the curb of the storefront, or the branded t-shirts hanging in the window, or the rat traps tucked beneath the legs of the outdoor furniture until I could no longer look at the store or at Maggie and John; I made “Frick Park Market” a stranger.

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            In 2011, the up and coming hip-hop artist, Mac Miller released a single entitled, “Frick Park Market” with an accompanying music video with upward of forty-two million views on YouTube. Miller raps about his experience working at the market in his teenage years and his life growing up in Pittsburgh.

The lines “Uh let me get a turkey sandwich, Uh, lettuce, tomato…” and “Anything you need you can find it at the market…” with accompanying visuals of Miller making sandwiches and downing Slush Puppies propelled Miller to the forefront of the music industry and made him one of the top artists before his unexpected passing in 2018. The song brought the world of “Frick Park Market” to millions of people globally and transformed my perception of a reoccurring symbol of my day.

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“Frick Park Market” was no longer the corner store I had grown to develop a complex relationship with. The market would, for the first time, become separate from Maggie and John. Miller, through his lyricism and imagery, detached the smell of burning tobacco and the yellow smile worth a thousand words from the red brick market. My after-school evenings would no longer consist of awkward walks past a stranger, but a refreshing reminder of my childhood. The national spotlight brought to an old, neighborhood symbol allowed me to remember the bliss I experienced from getting lost in rows of brightly colored candies and boldly packaged chocolates.

Listening to Miller's song, I stare at the cover art, an abstract painting of the market, and I again wish I could return to the shade of the black and white striped awning with a frozen treat in hand, constantly looking forward to visiting Maggie and John’s.