6 episodes · 2h 25m
Closing Time
He lettered the windows on one county-seat square for forty-eight years, and he was the man they called back to take the name off.
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It is a strange trade. He was invited in at the beginning of nearly every business in that town, when a man was so full of hope he could not sit down, and he was called back at the end of most of them, when there was nobody left to call.
Each episode is one business: the day he lettered the window, the years in between, the last day, and what the town did with the building afterward. A bakery, a cobbler who stayed open nineteen years after there was nothing left to repair, a chain five-and-dime, a hotel whose rooms stopped being nightly and started being monthly, a creamery, a picture show.
Some of these buildings fill again. One of them he lettered twice.