I Was Born in a Small Town But Not This Small

The population of the town was somewhere in the 30s, and even a kid could tell it wasn’t growing.

It had a church and a bar, which met the minimum requirements for being a town in those days.

My parents were visiting friends there. When that happens, there is grown-up talk and a kid typically gets put out of the house with little concern about where I went or who I was with.

I quickly found a couple of neighborhood kids my age and we played by acting goofy and running around at full throttle on a scorching day. I came into the house in need of water. I brought the other two kids. I presented a backstory to my parents on each of my new friends. I knew their first names, and that the boy had freckles enough for a few kids, and the girl appreciated a good fracas. Properly hydrated, we went back outside to see the girl’s dog. It was a handsome canine, a definite 10 in town but a -2 at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

We were considering various shenanigans when the girl’s grandpa showed up and told us to follow him, which we did obediently.

He wore a feed store gimme cap with a tattered bill and serious stains. He was old. His granddaughter told me he was 183 years, 5 months, 3 weeks and 2 days old. She tended to exaggerate. If she’d been Pinocchio, her nose would have been as long as a football field.

Her grandpa had a hitch in his get-along. It might have been a wobbly knee or a hip, or both. Limping is common with grandfathers. Grandpas move in mysterious ways.

He opened the door of his pickup. The two doors of the truck weren’t the same color, which made it easy to know which side the steering wheel was located.

He was a farmer and a bit disheveled. His truck matched him. The dash of his pickup was his office. The command center had duct tape, receipts, notes, a pair of pliers, a plethora of pens, a couple of stray nuts and bolts, a half-eaten something and the kitchen sink.

We piled into the front and only seat. There were no seatbelts to buckle, so in a moment we pulled up next to a Deep Rock sign. That wasn’t a tribute to the Beatles. The service station once carried the Deep Rock brand of petroleum products. That was before it became whatever it was when we were there.

 

It was a place where people just passing through town were unlikely to stop, so it had no gift department, but the Deep Rock service station was the only place in town to get kid necessities – pop, chips and candy. It offered cigarettes and WD-40 for everyone else.

“You want a bottle of pop and a candy bar?” asked our driver. My attention span lengthened.

Great googly moogly! What a great question! He should have been a game show host. He didn’t need to sugar talk me into saying “Yes!”

The small stop had become a big outing. If fist bumps had been a thing, the three of us would have garnered black eyes.

Three thankful kids with three ice-cold pop bottles from a slider machine—a Coke, Squirt and Dr Pepper. Each drink was paired with a candy bar. A Seven Up Bar featured a cherry, coconut, caramel, fudge, jelly, maple or Brazil nut center in its seven segments. A box of chocolates in a single candy bar. The Walnut Crush was a maple-flavored nougat and walnut concoction. Let the good times roll.

The grandfather took out his wallet. No moths flew out and no echo was heard. He paid.

We walked home as the man drove off into the sunset. The girl said her grandpa had embarrassed her when he used his middle finger to point at a Walnut Crush.

I should have told her that he used the middle finger of his right hand to point at things because he didn’t have a pointer finger on his right hand. Lost it in a farm accident, I figured.

  But she knew that, and I didn’t want to become involved in a fracas with an exaggerator.