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.