It’s true that you can never go home again. If for no other reason than time is a component of the universe (you know, that old time and space thing) and the place you remember cannot be revisited because it no longer exists in this time. Only a simulacrum and undoubtedly, a changed one at that.
Sometimes this reflection can be comforting enough to soothe our need but more often than not, it is hollow somehow. More gaudy, smaller, and less poignant with the connection frayed and weathered.
The little country store only covered 100 sq. ft. or so, but seemed much larger to a child. At seven and eight, your perspective is a little skewed. Just down the road from my Grandfather's farm, it sold Coke and Pepsi Cola, Nehi Grape and Orange Soda, and Yoo Hoo chocolate drinks, candy and cigarettes, and odds and ends to all the local farmhands and, of course, all us kids.
In a time and place when aluminum cans, pop tops and even twist off tops were unheard of. Everything came in glass bottles and had a deposit. The shed out back was stacked to the ceiling with cases of empty bottles.
The parking lot was paved with tens of thousands of bottle caps that constantly filled the bottle openers on the side of the two chest type cold drink coolers. It could be painful to walk across barefoot and cuts were common. It’s just that as children on a farm in the summertime, you were always barefoot. Breaking up dirt clogs in the fields with your bare feet was a favorite pastime.
In the halcyon days of youth, innocence abounded and responsibility was a concept yet to be discovered by us.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment