ArcaMax

It's an amazing gift, like a crimson sunset. It's an amazing institution, like the public library. And it's an amazing treasure, like Aladdin's cave. Except instead of gold and rubies, there's milk and cat food.

I'm speaking, of course, of the local mini mart: That humble store, often as tall as it is wide, stocked with every item you didn't expect to find there. (Except you sort of did, or why'd you go there in the first place?)

In New York City, we call them bodegas. In your neighborhood, maybe it's the corner store or deli. Heck, maybe it's the gas station.

Muffins mummified in cling wrap, plantain chips both salted and un-, Hershey Bars slightly reshaped by global (or at least in-store) warming -- all these are staples at the typical bodega. But the truth is: You can also find these staples -- cheaper, bigger, less lumpy -- at the local supermarket, which is often not that much farther away. So why would anyone patronize the dinky little deli when there's a bona fide grocery down the road?

Well, first of all, there's speed: No lines. No self-checkout (which usually ends up being self-with-the-aid-of-a-clerk-because-something-went-wrong checkout). Somehow bodega cashiers always know what everything costs from memory. They're fast.

Then, too, there's sometimes homemade food. In many a backroom or basement, a grandma is making pakoras or tacos. I was in a Queens bodega the other day that sold homemade glazed fruit. And the smells are irresistible too. "At the bodega on my corner, they always seem to be making bacon," an Orthodox Jewish friend of mine said. She keeps kosher, but it's not forbidden to pass and sniff!

There's also something of the scavenger hunt about these stores. You go in there and think, "They can't POSSIBLY have strawberry syrup." Or, "I don't want to go to the supermarket just for a package of onion soup mix." And then you look way, way, waaaaay up on the shelf, and there it is!

Maybe slightly past its sell-by date. Maybe 79 cents more than at the grocery. But still: score.

Most important of all, however, are the people.

I've heard of bodegas that do that old-fashioned thing: Give you credit. Not via a credit card. Via trusting you to pay another day.

I've also heard of bodegas where the owners know their customers so well, they are basically social workers who happen to sell Red Bull. When my friend's mom had a stroke, the owner of the local mini mart saw her walking home from the hospital in tears and made sure she had food. Years later, he made the platters to feed folks after her mom had passed. He also let my friend "borrow" his best worker to help her move her mom's belongings.

That's worth paying a little more for a can of tomato sauce.

Personally, I am forever indebted to my local bodega owner because I just heard from my son, now 26, that back when he was in high school and once went in to get an Arizona Iced Tea, he paused to marvel at all the shiny lottery tickets. So many ways to win! But the man behind the counter, old and bearded and born far away, shook his head. No, he told my son, "Don't get started."

When you have a place where people sell you gum and lend you money, help you through life's big transitions and keep your son on the straight and narrow, you are lucky indeed.

Let us raise a cup of lukewarm coffee and toast to the very best bodega in America.

Yours.

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Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com, and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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