It was just a little country grocery store but, in some ways,
a microcosm of a part of America—more Cannery
Row than Peyton Place or Revolutionary Road.
It sat beside a state highway that connected the City of Pine
Bluff to lower Arkansas (L.A.) and had maybe a tenth of the traffic that uses
that road today. It had enough traffic to support the store, though, and the
store made enough money to support a family: ours.
The building could be seen from a mile away, as a motorist
crossed Bayou Bartholomew, the longest bayou in the world, to be immortalized
later by guitar wizard Steve Davison.
A strange cast of characters met there each morning, along
with the sporadic customers. My father would open before daylight to catch
those going to work. He closed late in the afternoon, often putting in 14-hour
days during the long days of cotton chopping and picking. We all helped, at
various times.
The regular crew would gather around a pot-bellied stove at
the rear of the store somewhere around mid-morning, after the traffic slowed.
Sol, a master “body man” would quit sanding a car next door and wander over for
a bottle of “Sweet Lucy,” i.e. Garrett snuff. Then came Sam the Bread Man. He
would fill the rack and settle in for a break. Sam had been a teacher once. He
couldn’t feed his family on the wages of a teacher, but he could still quote
long sections of William Cullen Bryant’s Thanatopsis.
He would if you asked him to.
Various salesmen and retirees made up the rest of the crowd,
along with a few souls that were chronically allergic to work. Those included a
man named Elmer, who had tried every known type of employment a rural life
could offer, even preaching. When asked why he quit that job, he said, “Well, to
tell the truth, I liked it. Didn’t have to work too hard. Got to visit all the
women whenever I wanted. Felt good about spreading the Gospel. But, to tell the
truth, the son of a bitches just wouldn’t pay me.”
That was a sample of the type humor that could break up the
place.
My daddy ruled the store. My mother ruled my daddy. So, the
crowd behaved, mostly. Since our house connected onto the store, only a screen
door stood between our kitchen and the back of the store. Often, my mother
would stop her ironing and cock an ear when the voices up front lowered to a
low murmur. “They’re telling jokes,” she would say. Usually, she would allow
them one or two, but would then start stirring around, making noises to signal
that things were getting out of hand, and the boys might better behave.
They would, for they all feared her above anything.
During deer season, they had a special tradition. Daddy
would put a big pot of seasoned water on the wood stove and everyone would
bring something to put in it. There was little planning involved, so the
results varied, but they always declared their deer-meat stew the best ever
made, as long as my mother would furnish the corn bread. I can still smell
those days if I try.
The store is gone now, “supermarketed” out long ago. None of
the crowd is still alive, just a memory of Sol taking his first dip of the day,
Sam quoting poetry, or maybe the way a certain man talked when describing a
legendary coon dog. There is nothing left at that spot but those memories. Even
the old building fell when they widened the highway.
I like to think though, when winter comes and men head for the
“deer woods,” that there is some little white building somewhere, maybe high in
the Arkansas Ozark mountains, where a bunch of men are seated around a wood stove
on empty nail kegs, cooking a stew and telling jokes in a low voice so no one
can hear. America would be better off for it.
 |
| The old place with Sol's body shop next door. |
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