Village Church - Sunday School

I was packed up and shoved out the door with my older brothers and sister when I was only five years old.

I followed them down the driveway and along the road to the Baptist Church on the corner, because Mom made me do it.

We were all spiffed up in our Sunday best, hair slicked and faces scrubbed and a bow or two in our hair. No, not the boys. They had hair goo that smelled good and made them look like little rockers before their time.

It was Sunday morning and Sunday School started promptly at 10 a.m., in the basement of the Church where it was cool in the summertime and cold in the winter.

In the center of the basement, we sat on chairs and listened to the slightly out-of-tune, tinny sound of the piano that suffered from basement woes, and we sang kids songs about Jesus and Sunshine Mountain and If You're Happy And You Know It songs, and we clapped our hands and grinned our way through fifteen minutes of fun before going behind curtains to our separate classes and our wonderful teachers.

I remember the first Sunday, after I completed Grade One in school, when Mom called up the stairs, telling us to get up for Sunday School. I was downright appalled. It was school vacation, for crying out loud, and that meant Sunday School vacation too, and I told her so, but did she listen?

Nooo.

"You go to Sunday school all year round," she said, with a gleam of something in her eyes.

"That's not fair!" I said in disgust.

Of course, looking back, year-round Sunday School didn't do me any harm, but I'd rather have been playing at home or outside.

When we got to be teenagers and all the privileges that were bestowed upon us at that age, we also had to go to Church at 11 a.m., as well as do our time in Sunday School.

Two whole hours of our weekends were stolen from us, just like that.

I actually loved Sunday School and all the girls looking dolled up, even some wearing ridiculous red lipstick when they shouldn't have been, and the boys in their white shirts and one tie and dress pants and shoes polished by their very own hands. You could tell, because they were still wearing some polish stains around their fingernails.

The boys acted up during the singing part because they liked to sissy-mimic the cute girls' singing, and the girls were all cute, of course, and could sing like little angels too.

Boys were so immature, but lovable when you think of it, looking back.

Not at the time, though. Nope.

They were a Royal Pain.

And they sucked the dignity right out of Sunday School morning in the Baptist Church in the village every chance they got.

Long-Ago School Teachers: Discipline

Teachers in the old days had ways and means of dealing with bratty kids.

A talkative kid in the classroom?

1. Shut up
2. Tie up
3. String up

Most teachers didn't opt for number 3 as their first choice, though they wanted to. They'd do anything to save their sanity some days.

A dirty-mouthed kid?

1. A good scrubbing with a dirty bar of used soap.

2.  Duct tape


Duct tape was not invented by Red Green, contrary to popular belief. It was invented by - you guessed it - teachers needing to save their own sanity. A desperate move.


But slap on a good piece of duct tape and bam - no more dirty mouth.


Until you rip that sucker off.


A kid who won't stay in his seat?


1. Tie up
2. String up


Both work well here. Which number the teacher chose depended on whether or not her cat pooped on the bedspread again in the night.


A bully on the playground?


1. Go for the old western trick of hogtying the brat, saddling up your old nag, and taking that bully on a nature tour of a wild cactus field, as seen from the ground up.


Teachers have nothing today to keep their sanity.


They should just remember their grandpappies good old days, and the teacher's they all had way back then.


That would clean up the classroom in a mighty big hurry.

Long-Ago School Teachers: Reading Groups

Has there ever been a teacher in the past who didn't name the three reading groups in grade one? Bird names were the norm, like Robins, Bluebirds, and Cardinals.

The teacher hoped that no six year old kid was smart enough to realize that the bird names actually meant something.

For example:

Robins are group one - they can get the word the first day they see it, and they remember it. 


Bluebirds are group two - it takes them maybe a whole week to learn and store the new words somewhere in their brains.


And Cardinals - the teacher can slam her head against the blackboard for four months, but those birds will never get the words.


Never did a kind teacher name a reading group the Sparrows, and that's because people scoff at Sparrows, the common as dirt bird. No offense, Sparrows. Not even group three got insulted by being called a Sparrow.


Unless the teacher was mean.


And then you got called worse.


For example:


Storks
Emus
Buzzards


Nobody could figure out which was the smart group in that bunch of names.

Some teachers tried to please boys with tough names.


For example:


Lizards
Gators
Rats


What boy wouldn't love being a Rat? What boy could possibly care whether or not he could read the word "cat" after nine months of teacher head-slamming against the blackboard? He was a Rat.


It's a darned good thing teachers didn't use bad words for their reading groups.


For example:


Semi-theres
Dufuses
Dingbats


What teacher would have survived a year when an irate parent stormed the school, screaming that the teacher called her little Susie a dingbat?

Village in the Good Old Days

I grew up in a village where the two-room school and a Baptist Church dominated two corners of the T road junction.

The church was old. The school was built when I was three or so, but they both had soft red brick on their sides and they both looked solid enough to last forever.

The main road that ran straight through the village on its way to town had houses lining its sides, all nestled together for comfort and warmth.

There was a general store at one end of the village. It had a 2-storey false storefront much like the pioneer day stores, because it was as old and as worn out as an old and worn out pioneer who'd come a long way and seen a lot of things in his time.

There was a diner, that was really a restaurant, with booths against its walls and a counter with red and chrome bar stools that swiveled just like they should.

The diner was owned by a husband and a wife. The wife cooked and baked in the kitchen and the husband waited on the customers out front. They hired a waitress or two over the years and everybody knew everybody else coming and going in the diner.

It was a stop-off place for long distance truckers who settled their rigs on the gravel and sauntered inside and up to the bar. Truckers knew a lot of things and had a lot to say about them, making them great customers for anyone within earshot.

After-church folks wandered in for Sunday lunch so the wife wouldn't have to cook.

Lunchtime schoolkids could cross the parking lot, short-cutting their way to the general store with coins jingling deep in their pockets.

Teenagers met in the dark in the far corners of the lot on a summer Saturday night.

The village contained small farms right smack dab in amongst the houses. Barns and cows and chickens and cornfields for corncribs and silos were right there in the village.

The village people used the gas pumps at the general store and the diner, and someone inside came out to fill your tank and shoot the breeze with you for awhile. They always washed your windshield and raised your hood to check your vehicle's fluids, without being asked to.

No one was ever in a hurry in our village, Things got done when they should.

The sign, down by the railroad tracks, that announced the name of our village always said Population 100, no matter who was born or who died or who moved in or who moved out.

That sign represented the constancy of our village as with most villages in the good old days.

Solid and the same.

My Dad's Garage

He didn't own it. He just ran it.


His love of cars made him a good mechanic.


His love of people made him care about their sick cars.


His respect for people had him leaving the dinner table and going out in the rain or cold to work on a stranger's car stalled on the side of the road out by our house.


Dad was precise in all aspects of his life. He tackled the job with common sense and knowledge. He perceived life as having to make sense.


So in the garage, if the engine had a rattle in it, there were only so many things that could mean, and he quickly eliminated the most logical or else he solved the problem.


He was tuned in to the sounds, because he trained himself to be.


There was no way Dad would not achieve customer satisfaction, because he wouldn't quit until the problem was fixed.


Needless to say, he racked up a lot of loyal customers.


The other mechanics in the shop came to him when they needed help or advice.


He taught and trained, went to night school throughout the years to refresh and learn new things in the automotive business, and always was available to anyone who had a sick car.


When I was a kid, there were days when Dad needed to work on his own car, so he would ask one or more of us kids if we'd like to go in with him.


My brothers were the first to say yes, but they were boys and rambunctious to a fault, and despite Dad's admonition to touch nothing, they did anyway, and so their times in the garage on a Sunday afternoon were short-lived.


I loved to be taken to the garage because I was curious and enjoyed new experiences.


I went because Dad said I could, even though a girl wasn't supposed to enjoy the smells and the hardness of a garage shop the way I did.


I went because I followed him around, watching and asking questions that never drove him crazy. I could tell that, because he answered my questions eagerly and demonstrated and taught me just like he did the mechanics.


I never went near the pits. I never got greasy, because I skirted anything on the floor that looked suspicious, and I never touched a thing.


I watched him remove tires from their heavy rims and shove inner tubes into new tires, then install them onto the rims using a crowbar. Then he'd bounce the tire from a two-foot drop, making me grin.


He balanced the tires with tiny shims and they were all set to go.


Dad loved his work. It was so obvious to me. His face lit up whenever he talked about cars.


He did not stay home from work when he was sick. He had a job to do, and probably going to the place he loved with a passion made his illness heal that much faster, because he was so happy there.


He never complained.


He never had his cuts stitched or bandaged, because he had a job to do and those things got in the way.


When he came home every noon and after six at night, his hands had been scrubbed to remove all signs of grease and grime, a task that took him a good five minutes to do. So his hands were not a "mechanic's" hands when he was home around us.


The funniest thing about Dad's interest in cars was that, after we kids moved away and started our own homes and lives and went back for a visit, Dad would meet us in the driveway before we even got out of the car, and he would say, "Pop the hood for me, will you? I need to take a look at your engine."


Not that the engine sounded funny or anything. It was all about his love of all things cars, and he couldn't resist one that pulled into his driveway.


Before we left to go back to our homes a few days later, he'd have checked out every wire and plug, belt and hose, the radiator, battery, suspension, tailpipe, and all four tires, and if anything needed a tweak, he did it.


Half the time we didn't even know he was out there doing it.


He needed no thank you of appreciation.


Just the sweet chance to gaze at an adorable engine and give it what it needed.


"People don't realize," he used to say. "That an engine is all about moving parts and liquids, and if everything isn't working in sync, the whole thing snowballs into a chain reaction, and before you know it, you've got a big problem. It's a machine," he said. "And machines don't fix themselves."


It was a sad day for Dad when he retired, and a sad day when he saw the stupid way that car-makers were headed.


- Serpentine belts covering it all instead of separate belts doing each job.


- Engines mounted sideways so everything was hard to get at.


- Computer systems that could never replace good old-fashioned simple mechanical parts. Those systems fazed out the solid, reliable mechanics and replaced them with college mechanics who could not do the job to any degree of success.


They may have known computers, but they did not know the engine.


Car manufacturers' warranties became shorter and shorter because of this. And Dad said if the manufacturers have no faith in their products, then why should the consumers?


Dad's generation is long gone. But so are his garage and his methods and his experience in understanding and caring for the mechanics of a car.


They just don't make mechanics like that anymore, nor do they make the kind of cars we had back then.

Cats From Start to Finish: Bizarre to Us, Maybe

There she goes off the sofa a mighty leap landing thirty feet away in the dining room screeching left into the kitchen another another crazy left down the hall up the stairs doing 60 MPH down again flying over the bannister. Whoa!

Okay - all done. Got that out of her system.

Back to the sofa, up we go, settle down into a perfect circle, head on crossed paws, totally relaxed, not even huffing and puffing.

Okaaay. What was that all about?

She looks at you, still sitting exactly where you were when all of this started, and gives a roll of her eyes, like you're the crazy one.

You, demoralized and guilty, go back to your book, totally incapable of focusing on the story.

Once again, your lovely cat has screwed up your brain, messed with your sensibilities, and proven yet one more time that she, in all ways, is far superior to anything you could ever do or be.

Mitsy was bizarre in more ways than one, using the "unexpected and fantastic" definitions of the word.

She loved birds, not on her plate, but in our backyard. They knew she loved them and so had no fear of her.

As she lay in the sun on the deck, a bird would land on the honeysuckle vine and exchange glances or words with her, laying close by, passing the time of day. At no time did Mitsy exhibit alert behavior, a lifting of the ears, a widening of the eyes, tensing her muscles, all of those things being dead giveaways if she was a normal cat facing a bird within grabbing range.

She stayed relaxed. The bird would even turn its back on her. She closed her eyes.

I marveled at this every time I saw it, because it was beautiful, a goodness in nature.

In the spring, when wacko baby squirrels hit the yard, Mitsy was right in her glory.

It was time to be bizarre.

She turned into one of them when she joined them down on the grass. Of course, they stopped their extreme frolicking to watch her go to town with her version of In Your Face Deranged Spider Dancing.

When she was finished, she waited for their applause, but she only got their stares. Then one or two would venture close to her and touch noses with her.

Maybe they thought she was one awfully goofy big, red squirrel, and too darned old to be acting like a teenager on sugar, because they never let her join them in their squirrel games.

She was a Rudolph in the squirrel world. A misfit.

Butterflies liked Mitsy.

The neighbor's year old cat, a female too, liked Mitsy.

Once Mitsy took the neighbor's cat into our house and gave her a tour. I saw them pause in each room and look at each other, as if they were talking through their minds.

I imagined Mitsy saying, "This is the bed I'm not supposed to be on, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her."

"See the fur on the towels in this closet? All mine."

"I watch television here, and sleep on the carpet in front of the fire when it's cold, right there."

"Don't look up, but I prowl at night and I get all the way up to that window. I said don't look up. She's watching. I take the TV to the mantel, then up to the window route because I can see your house from up there."

"Here's my bathroom. Pretty secluded, huh? I won't go if it isn't. I made that clear to her right from the start."

"Yeah, she's okay. Not too bright sometimes, though. She doesn't know I understand her language and can read her mind, so I get away with a lot of crap I shouldn't. If she opens that fridge door, I'm there, yowling like a banshee just to see what tidbit she'll give me. I don't even want it, but I eat it anyway, because I need to stay on top."

She's the boss, alright. At least, she was when she was still alive.

She was a great little friend, that bizarre red furball of mine.

To All Mothers

Weren't those short-lived days when your children were babies up to four years old really precious to you

I'm referring to the stages of walking and talking, exploring and experimenting, and the part where they just couldn't do enough for you.

I was telling a woman how positively helpful my son was around the house, and she just waved that off, saying, "He'll quit in a month or two and then he'll never help you again."

If that was to be true, I decided to cherish the moments.

Both my son and daughter went through the helpful stage, and it was delightful.

My baby son could even drive the car when the diapers were running low and he got a craving for corn chips and strained peas on a Saturday night.

He had his own set of keys (plastic) as a toddler, and he'd drag his daddy's sandals to the front door, step into them, reach up with his keys and "lock" the door for the night, any old time of the day he thought of it.









When baby sister came along, big brother climbed up on the stool, threw his three year old 
hands into the sudsy water, and helped wash the bottles for her. He had a tiny brush and a big brush, and he labored like a pro.




Baby sister grew tall enough to put all the clean cutlery away, by tossing it up and over the lip of the drawer when she was only two. All those forks and knives and spoons landed somewhere in there, and when she was done, she shoved the drawer shut with two little hands and marched off to bake a sand pie or two for dinner.

When it was green bean season, nobody could snap off the ends and toss those beans into the pot and on the floor and into her tiny waiting mouth like little sister could.

They both folded laundry and dumped it on the right beds, in a big old heap.

They knew how to keep me company, when I so desperately needed a nap and laid down to snooze on a bed with them watching me like a hawk.

And they could tell stories like nobody else when it was time to let the young imaginations click in. Like the massive green dinosaur with no teeth that walked on two legs down Gulf Blvd some days, a friendly dude who was lonely and needed a friend. And they both saw it. Oh, yes.

But the days when helping around the house was no longer a good thing came all to soon, and I kissed goodbye that stage, just like I knew I needed to.

Still, though...weren't those precious days heaven sent, all you mothers out there?

Mediterranean Cruise, Log Four: Sidi Bu Said

It was in Sidi Bu Said that I saw streets made of stone steps, streets that wound up between buildings as white as chalk and disappeared into the sky, or so it seemed.

There were a few rough cobbled streets that carts and donkeys could maneuver but all of the side streets weren't streets at all, if you picture them the way ours are.

The steps were wide and touched the buildings on both sides. The steps were shallow, and natives ran up and down them with ease.

On one such street, a small boy leaned against a building and eyed me as though he didn't trust me, smile or not, soft words or silence. He just stared. He should have been in school, because he looked about nine.

Along one cobbled street, recessed stone areas seemingly carved into the sides of buildings like caves in a boulder mountain held workers on their flat shelves about three feet off the cobbles.

In some of these "window display areas", children worked feverishly, heads down in concentration, eyes watching their hands as their brown fingers expertly wove reeds into delightful baskets of all shapes and sizes. Some of the older children wove leather strips into sandals.

The children looked to range from five to twelve years in age. They seemed so lonely in their quiet solitude, and it tore at my heart.

I wanted to reach out and touch them, to smile at them, and ask their names.

In one of the "windows" on a rough, hewn shelf, an ancient man, wizened and miserable, worked at his craft with wrinkled tobacco-stained hands. He looked so tired.

The bus had dropped us off in a wide open sandy area at the base of the town of Sidi, a town that rose solid and white up the hillside like a monument to North Africa. There was no room for a bus to pass through the streets.

A cafe offered strong coffee and poppy seed pastries near the bus area.

On the sand, men holding lengths of beads spoke rapidly, holding up the yellow opaque beads, and I wondered what they were.

"Amber," they said eagerly. "See."

Out came cigarette lighters, a flick, and a rising flame was held to the beads.

"See," they said. "Amber. No burn."

Amber - beautiful pale yellow. Not paste beads but the real things, strung on thick strings with a knot to hold the necklace together.

Intrigued, I chose one, saw how heavy it was, how coarse the holes in the beads were, and I absolutely was charmed by it. I bought it and let the seller drape it around my neck with pride.

The long ride down to the harbor was so scenic I wished we could have stayed longer.

These North African countries fascinated me. The people did as well. They worked hard at pleasing foreigners, white people from across the ocean who couldn't possibly speak their language, so they spoke ours in halted words, enough to make us understand.

I marveled at the dignity of the men, for there were no women allowed in tourism. The men were always respectful and kind to us and each other, beautiful and attractive men who wore only white clothes with brown camel sandals on their feet.

They were men who smiled a lot, smiles that were genuine.

I hope their lives are still good there, but I wonder.

Small Town Diner, Small Town Girl

She's the perfect little princess girl headed for the diner in her white petticoat and pink gingham dress, her tiny white shoes spotless on her tiny feet.

Her brother went to the diner earlier and came home acting like a stupid hotshot again.

Joey might be her twin brother, but he's nothing like her, she knows. And he had hidden her best doll this morning, making her cry.

Bibbly is a sensitive doll with pretty blond curls just like her, so Joey has to pay.

Pussyfooting across the gravel, little miss feels every stone beneath her shoes, just like a princess would.

At the diner door, she stops and runs through the plan in her head one more time, then takes hold of the handle and opens the door.

Ding.

She smiles, closes the door.

Oops, the door shut all by itself.

Open the door again.

Ding.

Aah, such a lovely announcement. One more time.

The door closes, mysteriously.

Then ding, and slowly she makes her grand entrance.

Aunt Helena always says a lady should make an entrance, and making an entrance is my specialty.

Mrs. Buttercup sees who comes into the restaurant and she rolls her eyes.

"Good morning, Susie," Mrs. Buttercup says cheerfully, indulgently to the little miss walking so primly across the floor toward her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Buttercup. I know my brother was in here this morning. What did he steal this time?"

Mrs. Buttercup's eyes open wide.

"Nothing," she says. "Joey doesn't steal."

"Oh, yes he does. Did he eat anything?"

Mrs. Buttercup frowns. "A plate of fries."

"And how do you suppose he paid for that?"

"He had a quarter."

Mrs. Buttercup motions the little miss to sit on a stool so she can lean across the counter and whisper.

Susie Armbrewster does her best to climb the stool looking like a princess, and she almost succeeds.

If her petticoat hadn't got stuck on the red vinyl seat...

"Are you alright, dear?"

Mrs. Buttercup rushes around the counter and reaches to haul the mortified angel up off the floor where she's landed in an embarrassing heap of gingham and white silk and delicate legs.

"There. Sit down right there. Nobody saw you do that," Mrs. Buttercup whispers.

"I didn't do it," Susie hisses. "Your stool did."

"Sorry. I'll have it looked at. Now, why do you think Joey steals?"

"He's a no-good, mean old crybaby of a brother, that's why."

"I thought he was nice."

"Do you know where he put Bibbly?"

"Bibbly?"

"In the cat box, that's where."

Little miss straightens her pretty dress and looks forlornly up at Mrs. Buttercup and all that woman can see in the child's eyes is revenge.

"How be," she says quickly. "I dish you up a nice bowl of strawberry shortcake and pour you a glass of ginger ale on ice and play your favorite song on the jukebox and..."

Little miss smiles sweetly and looks around and sees a young man over by the cash register watching her. He is handsome and he smiles at her.

"Mrs. Buttercup?"

"Yes, Susie?"

"Joey stole the quarter."

"He didn't."

The young man can't take his twelve year old eyes off the village princess.

"I would like all of those things you said, please, and the same for Gavin over there, so you tell him to come and sit with me and I won't do anything about the red stool. Okay?"

Mrs. Buttercup nods and looks over at Gavin Harris.

"And Mrs. Buttercup?"

"Yes, dear?"

"The next time Joey comes in here, make him tell you the truth about where he gets his money, okay?"

"Alright."

Susie Armbrewster gives Gavin Harris the come-on look of the eight year old girl that she is, and Gavin just comes on over and slides down on the vinyl seat beside her.

Joey's "no-good, conniving bartender" skulks away back through the swinging doors of the saloon to the kitchen to make two strawberry shortcakes, on the house, shaking her head at the nonsense Susie Armbrewster has come up with yet again.

That little girl will rule the world one day, she thinks, and her sweet little brother Joey won't know what hit him.

Out in the restaurant, the small town girl sighs and bats her eyelashes at the handsome boy who is under her spell.

Life is so sweet.

My Sister's Car

She was nineteen years old back in 1960, and she wanted a car - an old used car, something different, not your run of the mill man car like my brothers had.

She was nineteen and had a job and she needed a car and some male attention to go right along with it.

My uncle, Dad's brother, who was all of eleven months younger than dad and a man crazy about cars, was the one my brothers went to when they wanted yet another old car they could love and pamper until they were ready for the next one.


So she went there too, and because she was a young woman who could charm if the mood struck, she had my uncle scrambling to find her something spectacular.

And that turned out to be a Willys, a 1939 Willys, as black as spades and to me as ugly as the depths of an abandoned coal mine and just about as spooky.

I hated that car.

My sister loved it.

My brothers groaned and moaned, poor things, because that uncle never found them a car anywhere near as exciting as her Willys.

Shame on him.

My brothers would have done justice to that car, fighting over it, cherishing it, polishing it and showing it off.

My sister just drove it to work and around town, smirking at all the male attention she got, and to this day I can't believe she drove that thing in public.

I refused to ride in it, go anywhere near it, say anything nice about it. I was disgusted.

My sister was as hopeless as that car.

When she decided she needed a trip to New York City, all expenses paid for a week, she entered a newspaper contest to be the number one seller of subscriptions. She had a certain number of weeks to do it in and she was determined to do it.

And of course it had to be at night after work when she went calling on people to make her sales pitch, and it was as dark as Hades out because it was the dead of winter in southern Ontario when the contest ran.

So she got scared one night riding the dark country roads in her "hot" car and knocking on strangers' doors and asking to come in, and some men were way too willing to accommodate her, she figured. You bet she got scared, so guess who she turned to for help.

I said there was no way in my lifetime I'd ever get in that ugly black car she was so proud of. She begged and begged and I said I'd give up an hour or two every night, as long as she drove a real car.

She refused that ultimatum, and because I felt sorry for her, I caved, and gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and stepped into the doom of the interior of that coal mine and went with her.

And because I did, she won the contest and went off to New York City with the runner-up girl, leaving me home and wondering why I'd done it.

What the two of them did on the long train ride and in New York City, I'll never know.

That's another thing I wouldn't have done at her age - gone to the Big Bad City.

But buying an old black 1939 Willys was about the awfullest thing my sister could ever have done as far as I'm concerned, and I never hesitated to tell her that whenever I saw her in the car and headed out to impress the boys just one more time.

She never got a boyfriend from owning the Willys, because what she failed to realize was that the boys never saw her behind the wheel.

They just saw the jaw-dropping, awesome car tooling down the road, where no other Willys had ever set foot.

Small Town Diner, Small Town Boy

You're young, a kid, headed for the diner all by yourself.


You've got a dime, a quarter, maybe even a hot little nickel in your pocket - money to spend.


You're your own boss, a kid who knows what he wants.


It's Saturday in the 50's, and you have a cowboy thirst on and a craving for a big plate of fries.


In the gravel parking lot, something brown catches your eye. You stoop down, your heart thudding, and lift the three pennies out of the stones, and practically kiss them in the palm of your sweaty little hand.


A treasure, found gold, straight from the mine. It doesn't get any better than this.


The diner door opens at your push and the bell dings, announcing your presence, like a prince, a man, a confident dude.


You look around, swagger on over to the counter, the long bar where red vinyl stools line up waiting for an important somebody's behind - and that's yours.


You slide onto a stool, near the far end where a cowboy would sit. You've seen it so many times at the Strand on the big screen, downtown.


Slowly, you nod your head, look around, casing the joint.


You need a drink.


"Bartender?"

Your right hand is raised, finger up, a master of signals.


The bartender has his long back to you over by the machine that's whirring, mixing drinks. He turns and recognizes you.


"Joey! How are you, kid?" A big grin, a massive show of respect for the cowboy.


"Uh...I'm just fine, Mrs. Buttercup."


"Well, that's good. I'll be right there. Why don't you play some music? You got a dime?"


"Yeah."


"Go put on my favorite, will you? Coke's on the house if you do."


Your face splits and your cheeks bunch. A free drink. Oh, yeah.

Off the stool, hitch up your spats by the waistband of your pants, saunter on over to the big old red and chrome box that plays the cowboys' tunes.


Tiptoes, up you go, leaning. Darned machine's as big as a stallion.


Flip through the selections. You can read, better than most in town.


Here it is - B21, bartender's favorite. A Gene Autry song. Your favorite too, it just happens. Bartender's got good taste.


In goes the dime, on goes the button, and step back to wait for it.


Man. That cowboy can sing.


The pinto under you sidesteps as you ride him back to the bar.


The bartender says, "Nice dancing, Joey." So you get that pony to behave, then settle back down on the stool.


"Your usual, kid?"


"Yeah."

The bartender slides the ice cold glass across the slick bar. Your hand snakes out and grabs it just before it crashes. You're good.


The beer is dark, a bad blend of rot gut and booze. You darned near choke on the first swallow. Bad stuff.


You look around to see who else is here.


Two old farmers eating eggs.


Two old women drinking coffee.


No dames, though. Never are dames in this bad place. No self-respecting dame would ever show her face in here.


The quarter buys the big plate of fries.


You've got a nickel and three pieces of gold waiting to leave your pocket before the sun goes down.


You spy the red machine down the counter, the one with the glass top filled with peanuts.


Slipping off the stool, you go on down and shove in your pennies, one at a time, then lift the metal flap and watch all those salty beans tumble out into your hand and on the counter.


"Hi, Joey."

A sweet sound.

You look over. It's the Morton kid, the one with the scream like a banshee.

"What do you want, Sally?"

"Some peanuts."

Dang!

"Sure. Hold out your hand."

She's five. Good thing her hand is so small, `cause it only holds five peanuts.

"Go on, now."

"Thanks, Joey. I love you."

"Yeah, yeah."

She scampers off. You shake your head.

Dames. She shouldn't even be in here. Steals your goods right off the counter.

"Fries are ready, Joey," the bartender calls.

Sighing, you settle back down and face the plate. Sweet.

You inhale a bucketload of perfection.


Close your eyes.


Picture yourself out on the range, sitting on your pinto's back and squinting into the morning sun.


"Can I have one of those too, Joey?"


Go away, kid, you're bothering me.


"Just one, then git, Sally. I ain't got all day."


"You aren't supposed to say ain't," she pouts, ticking you off.


"I'll say whatever I dang well want." You glower, scaring her.


She grabs two fries before you can stop her and runs like a coward.


An old farmer coughs.


Gene Autry winds down.


It's been a hard day.


Can't get any respect in this one-horse town.


Might as well eat and get the heck back out to the ranch.


You've got work to do, and plenty of it.


Jolly round Mrs. Buttercup leans on the counter and smiles at you like the mean bartender he is.


"Going to Betty June's birthday party today, Joey?"


You've got no time for this talk, let alone a stupid birthday party. A man's got real stuff to do.


"Yes, Mrs. Buttercup."


Yeah, what can I tell you. The dames are all over me.


"Hard to believe little Betty June's eight years old. What did you get her for her birthday?"


Snake oil, you say with a sneer.


"Bubble bath."


"Nice. Your mama pick it out for you?"

"Yes."

"Well, you have fun now. I hear her daddy's rented a pony. Nice, huh?"

You scoff. Yeah, right. You've got your own ride, your own steed, standing right here beside you, waiting for you to finish your fries and coke, if the danged world would just leave you alone.

"Thanks, Mrs. Buttercup." You smile.

Man, you hate this bartender. No good, conniving weasel, always cheating you. Never fills the glass up. Makes a ton of suds that burst in your nose. Can't even pull a decent beer out of the tap.

Next time, if you ever come back to this two-bit joint, you're buying the good stuff, straight up.

Two swallows of that swamp water and you're staggering.

Like a man.

A cowboy.

Ain't nobody gonna mess with old Joey Armbrewster no more.

Not after today.