That's it, Kroger, you've gone too far.

Closing the Perkins store at the end of this month rips it with me.

First, you doubled the size of the Sanderlin location. I adjusted, learned the new layout, and scheduled more shopping time to board the shuttle bus from the produce to the frozen aisle.

Then you rebuilt the Plaza store, the one in my neighborhood. As long as I shop the Thunderdome on Thursday, rioting is unlikely. Even hoping the Midtown store will address critical sushi shortage in the two blocks between Fresh Market and Sekisui.

But thousands of Memphians have been buying groceries at the corner of Poplar and Perkins since, I want to say, the late 1960s. When it was Seessel's, it was the heartbeat of East Memphis.  Whether you were dashing in with your classmates after White Station let out, or indulging a late night craving for chess pie, it was the landscape we grew up with. My late friend Vic Vescovo used the black "courtesy phone" in there as an alternate home phone, dialing the house to "see if they needed anything" just as a front for seeing and being seen. I suspect he was not the only one.

Through the transitions to Albertson's/Schnuck's/Kroger, we hung in there, because we could start and finish a week's grocery shopping in under an hour door to door.

But what really kills me is parent company Delta Division's rationale, that their other stores at Truse Parkway and Sanderlin within a 1-mile radius can "better serve our customers."

Really, Kroger? Scanning the Wednesday grocery ads in a Memphis Press-Scimitar from 1966,  the groceries serving East Memphis were Carondelet, Dixiemart, Del-Farms, Stepherson's Big Star, Hogue & Knott, A & P, WeOna, PicPac, and Montesi's.  FIFTY YEARS AGO.

We might not have had sushi, but we did have some choices.