After several years of battling it out in local government meetings, developers have finally bought out the prime real estate and are preparing to replace the age old dairy store with another strip mall and the enormous farm with hundreds of suburban estates. Suburban sprawl marches on.

Gone will be the Sunday afternoon post-ride ice cream stops. The dairy is (was...) located at a busy crossroads on the way to and from some of the best mountain biking Chester County has to offer. After a typically humid summer ride, there were few things more satisfying than a Ridglea single scoop.

As a farewell to the store, Michelle and I stopped by yesterday afternoon in the midday heat. The shelves were already depressingly empty and the actual dairy itself had recently been levelled. Out front, a handful of locals sat on the benches and ate their final ice cream cones slowly as they commisserated with each other over the injustice of the situation.

This weekend, they're holding an auction on the site to clean out the store. From the shelves to the old Elvis posters to Audrey the Cow who stood as a silent sentinal overlooking route 23, everything must go. It's certain to be a melancholy affair as ragged locals bid feverishly over the bones of the old store.

In time, I guess everything must pass. It's just hard to watch a classic old dairy that had been a cornerstone of the countryside pass away and get turned into so many tract homes and another predictable strip mall.

As the dairy sign proclaimed this weekend as we ate: Goodbye, Farewell, Amen.