“The store at the lost four corners has a pump, diesel side to the left, and a regular one on the right, if your tank opens on the drivers side. I rehearse the drill, every time I’m pulling in, anywhere. Earlier, in Waterbury, the display told me to “see cashier” and canceled my transaction. I wasn’t in the mood. Too many people, too many draining interactions, so I left without gas. Driving the back roads from Jonesville to Huntington, I’ve made it to Jerusalem, to find no competition at a statuesque pair of old pumps. A lone ice machine sits ‘round back in front of the house and walking stiffly with a bit of a gimp, I shuffle towards it, crossing the hot, dusty parking lot, wondering if I’m being watched. I don’t mind, I’m sort of invincible these days, immune to the strange contortions of other folk’s minds. It’s impossible to describe just how much like shoe leather my life has become. Rubbed soft & pliable, but as close to steel plated as an animal product can be. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”, heck yeah, but I can’t even find the bread in the low ceilinged general store, and ask a couple times, unable to follow commands that would land me in front of the last two loaves. I decide I can wait a couple days, for bread. I like this store, I decide, with its mood that fits the three-legged corner it sits on (I did exaggerate earlier when i said “four”), and I make a mental note to make it a regular stop. In my world, I need freedom and that looks very much like it used to look before, if I recall all the sauntering steps I’ve been able to take in and out of mom & pop stores, stopping to look at local pie slices & fresh donuts, buying that occasional pack of “Native Spirit” cigarettes, to puff on when i feel like it. Or further back, when Dee Dee bagged our groceries, while Jim whose head was wrong stood muttering next to the door, and she’d remember the names of all my kids, smile and tease them & Jim on cue handing the bags over to us, as we headed 50 yards to the skating rink or the library. This is just unimaginable now. Because, why? But before I answer that question, let me tell you more about how my day went. Thanks to the power of family, that can with terrifying precision both ostracize or embrace, a stream of pickup trucks appeared gnashing gear shifts up my farm road around 4 pm, to finish a job I couldn’t do, not easily, without them. Evidently they felt my need keenly, and like Nordics standing with their beautiful hair flying against the backdrop of Valhalla, swooped in to apply their collective, hard-earned strengths and charismatic powers. How I do admire my children! They don’t know everything, but what’s evident these days is that what I don’t do easily, seems to be easy for them. However, there was a time. So as they walk the thresholds of their future, or some local store they’ve grown to love & love for how it nurtures their children, I hope they’ll think of me. Of our bread, and how we pushed the cart. How we put things in the cart or the basket, and how it was up to me to make those decisions for them. And how much I loved doing everything in my power, to turn off the bad influences, like television, & pop tarts, so they could learn to focus on what’s real.”
