I stood on Main Street looking at the vacant lot where the old hotel had burned down. It was a hard spot to start my tour, but the place could not be ignored. It’s gaping emptiness is a raw reminder. It has been several years now since the place burned and no one has built anything new. That space used to be home to the post office and Thelma’s variety store, on the first floor. Two places I frequented often in my growing up years. The hotel part was on the second story.
I can call to mind each weathered window frame and the smell of the chilly air that used to seep from under the grates that vented the underside of the building. On a hot day, they were a good place to stand and cool off your bare feet. That building was old and tired. It sagged that the door frames. Even the cement near the doors had worn away from all the footsteps going in out. Footsteps of people on their way in to get a copy of Western Horseman magazine, or yard of fabric to make an apron for your first 4-H sewing project. Why did it always seem to be gingham fabric? They had all colors of gingham, in two sizes of check. Tiny, and huge. Medium was beyond anyone's ken I guess. You could get bobby pins and barrettes, batteries and beads. They had a little bit of everything.
Of course the main reason to go to Thelma’s was to get yourself some red wax lips, or little wax bottles with colored sugar water in them. If you were older, it was Junior Mints and a Cherry-a-Let. There was nothing like the feeling of walking into Thelma's with a quarter. If you were frugal, that quarter would buy you five small candy bars. But if you were feeling extravagant, the 10 cent ones would eat into your options for lots of variety. The Junior Mints were 10 cents, and they won out very often. I still have a weakness for them.
But now all that is gone. That spot is a kind of mini gravel pit blocked off with a chain-link fence. Makes me wish I was a millionaire. I would build a replica of the old building and maybe open up a candy shop. I wonder if they still make Cherry-a-Lets?
If you walk up the street, which is actually going south you will come to the phone booth just in front of the barbershop. Three or four steps away from the phone booth, is the exact spot where I experienced my first real kiss. I will not mention who did the kissing, because I do not kiss and tell. But suffice it to say, it was a momentous enough occasion for me to remember the spot.
Go up the street a little further and you will come to the drugstore, where you can get a quite decent scoop of ice cream. I recommend the Lemon Sorbet in summer and Pumpkin in winter. If you’re extra nice, they will crank up the player piano for you.
Mosey across the street at an angle and you will be in front of a small red two-story building that used to be a firehouse, but looks like an old schoolhouse. For all the years that I lived there, this building housed the library. A more cramped and cozy library you could never have found. I spent so many hours there, I could have told you exactly where every book was located. And in the old days, my name would have been on dozens of the cards in front. It was kind of fun to see who else had read the book you were thinking of checking out. And if you were so inclined you could call them up after you read it and ask them what they thought of it. Though I don't think I ever did. That building is a museum now.
And if you just keep walking up Main Street and start to wander, you will walk on sidewalks that I have walked on so many times I cannot remember. In all kinds of weather and in all kinds of moods, I walked and walked. Admiring someone’s flowers or shaking my head in disapproval of a messy, uncared for yard. I cannot think of a single street or a single place I have not explored in the entire town. If I was Abraham, it would all belong to me. For my feet have trod upon all its soil and in a way I do feel that sense of ownership. This is my town, and these are the people who live here now, and those who used to live here. Those still alive and those who now rest in the cemetery up the hill on the edge of town.
My hometown seemed a little old and tired this time, worn around the edges and sinking into the earth. Houses that once were brand-new, are now being remodeled. And some are just fading away. It's a strange feeling to have known a place when it was more vibrant. It's a kind of melancholy that runs deep.
You can't live in a town that long and not remember all the minutiae. The sounds, the smells, the texture of the street under your bare feet. For I so often walked barefoot, to the embarrassment of my parents. I was never quite sure why that bothered them so. I did a lot of walking in those days, I was a restless soul, and I spent many an hour walking up and down the streets. I had no idea what I was searching for. I suppose when you're young , you are searching for yourself, which when you think of it is rather a silly thing. We would do better sit down and wait. Perhaps we would catch up with ourselves. But no, I kept moving and in doing so memorize each imperfection in the sidewalk, each bump the road, the feel of the gravel under my feet, which at that time were as good as shoes, leathery and tough.
In any event, my town and I have both changed a lot. We're both worn around the edges and sagging in the middle. But we know each other very well, very well indeed. But if I want to remember it as it used to be, I think maybe I will go stand on that spot by the barbershop and see if I can remember all the details of that first kiss, the one that took my breath away.