YOUTH

 Sometimes I miss the America we are discarding.

Next door to our country grocery in south Arkansas was the shop of a man (long deceased) who did body work on cars. Each day, he would wander in when the delivery man for a local bakery and selected others showed up. They would gather around on nail kegs in the back of the store and solve the world's problems. The gatherings were genial, and what one might expect from a disparate group of southern rednecks.

Some were veterans of WWII. All were survivors of a devastating tornado in 1947 that killed 32 people in the community. All, to a man, were yellow-dog FDR Democrats.

Sometimes during deer season, they would all bring ingredients and cook a "Mulligan's Stew" on the old wood-burning stove. A FB friend is the daughter of the man mentioned above. She was a young girl, quite pretty as I remember, at the time. She says they used to tell her that the stew wasn't complete unless it contained an old sock.

What I remember, since our kitchen connected with the store, was when my mother would notice that the conversation had suddenly gotten very low. She would lay an iron aside, look at me and say, "They're telling jokes in there now, ain't they?"

I don't think things like that go on at the local Walmart.