Let me admit to being a thief. I would claim to be borrowing but I am never going to give back the words and ideas I took from all that reading. Henry David Thoreau, that early hippie and Transcendentalist, said it so well I can’t even disguise using it. “Time is a stream I go a’fishing in.” It is, for me, a perfect summary of the things I write. My fishing hole is the past… my past, specifically, and my hope is that it intersects here and there with your past.
I didn’t grow up in a better time. All times have their worries and their haves and have nots. I grew up in the time when veterans, still weary from World War II were called to serve with their younger brothers-in-arms in Korea. I attended all-white schools because change was slow and the rights of people of color were just beginning to become news. I grew up when polio was ending with a lump of sugar and wooden school desks were considered adequate to protect us from a nuclear missile.
I did, however, grow up in a world that was less processed, less stamped out, less standardized…a world where “Big Box Stores” were only “Thick Catalog Stores” like Sears. The term “Mom and Pop Store” did not exist because small family-owned businesses were the norm. I grew up when you could always get hamburgers but they were never wrapped in paper before you ordered them. Today, much is made of “specialty” burgers but in my early years, every burger, every hot dog, every sandwich was what our Brit friends ostentatiously call “bespoke.”
“What’cha want on it?” was a standard question when burgers were on the menu. Cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayonnaise and, oh, throw a couple of onion rings on top. Even the fountain drinks were served to order. Cherry Coke was not a pre-mix and I have never recovered from the loss of the lemon-cherry Sundrop.
There are so many local landmarks that are lost to time and growth. The post office during my childhood years was a dark cavern where Confederate Street met Main Street. I remember it vividly because my father worked part time there picking up mail from the letter boxes around town. A small foyer had a couple of windows where packages could be mailed or stamps purchased. To the right was a narrow hall lined on one side with what seemed hundreds of ornate brass doors, each was a tiny safe with two dials.
Letters were real then, hand-written in ink and often full of love and information. They were precious and personal enough to be locked away from other folks but, no child, no matter how well behaved, could walk that hall without spinning a few dials.
The Bank of Fort Mill, up the street, seemed equally dark and solemn. Incandescent lighting and dark wood combined with wrought iron trim and small windows must have been the signal for serious business. There was an atmosphere of “No foolishness here”. E. S. Parks, Dad’s good friend, was the banker when I was young and his daughter, Linda, won over the entire classroom when, in 1959, she brought a roll of the shiny new Lincoln Memorial cents and gave one to each of her classmates. It seemed a grand gesture.
My memories are often linked to smells. When I think of Culp Brother’s Store, now memorialized as “Culp’s Corner”, I smell the sweet blend of horse feed and grass seed and sawdust. Culp’s had groceries as well and there was a butcher shop and a small building in the back which held blocks of ice the size of hay bales. An ice pick was used to break off big chunks and a machine would crush the chunks into pieces small enough to fit in an ice cream churn.
Mills Hardware, just down White Street, was a constant haunt of my father as he created his current woodworking project. It smelled of 3-in-1 oil, fertilizer and fresh cut pine 2x4s. J. B, the owner, town character, predictor of snows and golfing friend of my grandfather would always take the time to tease me about my ubiquitous cowboy hat. When Dad needed a specialized woodscrew or brass hinges for a piece of furniture he was making, “Shine” Sanders, J. B’s sidekick would disappear up a half flight of stairs and return with just the right item.
On the other side of town was Luke’s Red & White Grocery store on the corner of Tom Hall and Banks Street. It is coupled in my memory with the whine of the bone saw and the unmistakable scent of fresh cut steaks and pork. Luke’s was a regular stop throughout my school years. Rosa Prior, who rented Mom and Dad a room when I first joined the family, worked the check-out and often managed to give me a hug as I bought Clark Bars and baseball cards. In high school I would get my friends to buy my cigarettes there for fear of disappointing her.
The Cinema Theater, at the bottom of Main Street, always smelled of popcorn mingled with sweet candies dropped on the concrete floor and smashed under Keds and Converse tennis shoes. Bugs Bunny cartoons, Red Ryder, and alien invasions were the stuff of Saturday matinees punctuated by sticky floors and popcorn raining down from the balcony. Small time bullies would occasionally target a victim with a bean-like piece of Sugar Babies candy.
The Easy Pay Store smell, for me, was the most memorable. Right up front were sports supplies and there is no smell for a kid like a new baseball and a well-oiled baseball glove. I don’t know of even one boy who, standing in the field waiting for a ball to be hit his way, didn’t hold the glove up to his face and inhale the rich leather. When I have my car washed and occasionally splurge on the 16 dollar wash, I ask for “new car smell”. They should just list it as “Baseball Glove”. It would be the Ranch Dressing of car smells. There should be candles called Spaulding and the wick should be a strip of the rawhide used to lace the gloves together.
Dark businesses, Saturday matinees and distinctive aromas are pretty much lost in the modern antiseptic world. Target and Wal-Mart have lots of everything except individual character, McDonald’s has two all-beef patties but even Burger King has given up making it “My Way”. When traveling through an unfamiliar area, my hope for a Watkins hot dog or Brandon’s Grill experience usually goes unfulfilled and I settle for a stamped, frozen burger in a place that is lit up like an automobile showroom.
I don’t want to go back to the days of chicken pox and ashtrays on every table and praise the Almighty for the GPS so I don’t have to fold another filling station road map. I like having restaurants on Main Street and am okay with supermarket sushi.
Maybe it’s not the past I miss, but the newness of it all. The time when you and I were young enough so that every experience startled our senses and we could find joy splashing in a mud puddle or hearing gravel crunch under our bicycle tires. When, as William Blake wrote, we could see “a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower”.
As we grow older, and have seen and done it all, we seek out those places that startle us again. We travel to the mountains or the ocean or even to exotic countries to bathe our jaded senses in unfamiliar sights and sounds and smells and to recapture not our past, but our sense of delight.
Just as there are landmarks in a concrete world, there are mindmarks in our past. You may not remember Frank Epps selling vegetables in the yard behind the old Spratt House on the hill. You may not be able to see his stocky figure with his blind eye scrunched up like Popeye or his bib overalls and jungle hat. You may not catch the smell of the horses standing in a nearby stall mingling with the smell of fresh cantaloupe and green beans and tomatoes. It was a time so long past that, in all probability, you don’t even remember Frank.
It is my hope, however, no matter your age, you have spent time around such vivid characters and the memories can waft up and bring a momentary smile.
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