Pa lives across from a country store. Been there for years. Ownership has changed several times. He goes over to eat dinner ’bout every day, sits at a table in back. Swaps tales with local farmers, like in a Norman Rockwell painting.
Road is coming through and Pa fears it will take business.
Day before yesterday I ate with him there. Felt like going back in time, to when I was a kid. Used to be that we’d work til lunch then get on the back of somebody’s pick-up and go to Wheeler’s store and get a boloney sandwich (sliced ’bout thick as your hand) with a big ole hunk of tomato, an RC Cola and a molasses-flavored moon pie.
We still have a lot of country stores, but rising gas prices, by-passes and general “progress” are doing their best to kill ’em.
The current owner, from North Carolina has traveled all over. He’s a good old boy though, real down home. Talks twangy, like the rest of us and wears hunting boots. He ate with Pa and me. Told us tales of his travels and all the weird things that happen to him everytime he goes north.
Lot of laughing went on, big story-swappin’. I did not want to finish my burger, to walk out of the snap shot of yesterday. I want to hold the image for the rest of my life before the road carries it away.
Nochipa
we have problems with a road
that’s going to cut the shoreline away from the land
and put traffic through the promenade
I understand your fathers concerns
it’s never about what’s best for local folk it about those people
wanting to get from a to c and not caring to much about the folks at b
once the wild is cut out of the land it can never come back the same way
the same things don’t grow
things move slowly here we are about fifty years back tourists complain
but when it speeds up they wont like it none because what they come for will be lost
it’s a good write feel like am leaning on the at petrol pump again looking over to you talking
jack
Oh, the thought of that road coming through like that and slicing up your island makes me sick inside. You’re right. It’s never what’s best for local people, but what’s best for the powers that be. And, I don’t even want to talk about the coal companies. So, I won’t. I’ll harp about that dumb old road some more.
It breaks my heart. There was a hundred fifty year old farm, the kind of thing people drive all the way from Oregon to look at– beautiful beyond words, enormous plantation house, acres and acres of giant oak trees, rolling hills, white fences…all gone! And what replaces it? A highway, an intersection and a super Walmart. Concrete. All for the sake of tourists. Kentucky has been rediscovered in the past few years and tourism is booming. It’s also killing the landscape. Between tourism and mountain top removal, they will successfully make it flat, boring and toxic.
Okay, ah’m gettin offen mah soapbox and gettin back to work. Thanks so much for your comments.
Nochipa