A store that I've been shopping in for most of my life is shutting down by the end of the year, and although it's basically just a big box store, it's really got me down.

All of the media outlets reported it over the weekend, but according to the retailer's officals, Connecticut's last Kmart, which is on Straits Turnpike in Watertown, will liquidate their inventory and will likely permanently shutter up by December of 2019.

I've been shopping at this store since I was a kid. My grandma used to pile us into her Olds Cutlass Ciera and drive us up Straits Turnpike, carefully navigating through car dealer row, and bring us inside and fill us up with sugary treats and cheap household items.

I was just in the store this past Saturday with Mrs. Large, and if you haven't been, Jesus, it still looks the same as it did -- no joke. The tile throughout the store is broken, the fixtures are worn and beat, the ceiling is dingy and the employees looked like they knew that the proverbial corporate guillotine was on its way down on their outstretched necks.

I don't care about the aesthetics of the store. It's a piece of my childhood, and damn it, if I needed a flashlight, or a toilet plunger, or even a cheap pair of flip flops for a ride to Hammonasset, it was still just a quick trip up Route 63 to pick up the goods.

Now, like everybody else, I'll begrudgingly go to Walmart in Naugy or fire up the tablet and order my toilet plunger from Amazon when I blow up the crapper.

This is the last Kmart in all of Connecticut. The closest Kmart now are scattered throughout New York, or in the Springfield, Mass area.