Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Maggie's Store - Part Three



Maggie's Store
Part Three

            I now have reported the cemetery legend and the my mother & grandmother gravestone bracelet find.  We have never made anything out of the occurrence AND I have not stopped visiting and “cleaning up” old cemeteries and their edges.  Returning to the whole tale…:  Going out included “a” “stop” at “a cemetery” “too”.  In fact, all along the way was “trunk it” and that was either an “anything” or “get that” or even the desirable “better wrap that one up”.  And more:  “HERE NOW we were going BY and SEE THAT” old table in the yard and that was NOT there “last time”.  Or more likely; the very tip of an old table just very slightly toward the barn door so that all one could see from the road was, to me, then, NOTHING.  But I “learned” “how to do” “that”; to “see” “stuff” in barns from... THE ROAD.  Before long and including the words “The Doctor” we’d be “in there” (inside the FARM HOUSE) and I’d be bored to death unless there was a molasses cookie tossed my way so as to buy time out of ME... .  Tedious and took the WHOLE DAMN DAY.  Except, of course, IF we “went” “somewhere good”.
            I was near two decades old before I “KNEW” somewhere from the “WHERE ARE WE?”.  This latter was my as-brought-up mental image of this …into the wilderness... travel in the back seat.  The endless hill and dale, “UP” the “interval”, “DOWN” “the river” or “CROSS” to the “flats”... would STILL befuddle me if I had not done extensive map in hand research since then.  I have and to relocate “lost” spots has been career long for me for I soon learned that I ...could “do a better job at it” (buying antiques from the old places) than “They” did IF I could just …FIND the places... again.
            ONE of these places... WAS... “Maggie’s Store”.  I liked going to Maggie’s Store.  It was “somewhere good”.  This is because when we went “there” I could always “buy” “as much” “candy” as I “wanted”.  There was a two folded reason for this but I honestly didn’t care about that at that time.  ALL I knew was that this woman, who was as round as a field pumpkin, as big as a hay pile, as jolly as Santa Claus and as profane as ...you are not EVER gonna be... would come barreling out of the back door of her old farm house as soon as my grandmother pulled in toward “the store” and she’d be in that store’s rear door behind the counter before we’d be in the FRONT door and there... time stops for me.
            I’m not one to be nostalgic and I can prove that I’ve stripped to the bare walls (bought everything out of) place’s like Maggie’s Store AND I also know that I learned to DO THAT (“strip ‘em) before it was “popular”[1] so, IN FACT, have sold AWAY cheap more nostalgic country store “collectibles” so that even if someone took their EMPTY BASEMENT and their FULL Mr. Wallet and played serious collector till a BLUE MOON, they are not... gonna... ever.  And... I am dead serious here... the stuff... is not the same... out of context (no longer resting in its original little Middle of No Where, Maine Maggie’s store setting).  Collectors should not be bothered by this notice and their collecting is fine but… it took ME twenty years to learn that and all I’m doing is passing MY hard learned expertise on to you.  UNLESS you were at a “Maggie’s Store” when you were four... AND fourteen years later stripped closed up Maggie’s style stores… after stores… of ALL the “stuff” in them … and sold “it all”… into “fine” “collections”... IT IS BEST TO TREAD REAL CAREFUL on this “subject”:  The “stuff” is better (more poignant) when in its original setting.
            This is because it really is not JUST the stuff... that made the store.  It had to include the sun, just after high noon, beating down on the car window behind which I sat.  It had to include the sand on ground in front of the store that made the little bit of dust and the little bit... of tire crunch when we pulled in.  And my grandmother saying “Don’t touch anything”.  And the little sloped porch with the soda pop and candy signs.   And the ... “coke machine” that was actually a red metal lined wooden box with only the very tops of “all kinds” of “pop” bottle necks sticking out of water with ice in it... .  Then a little jingle from a bell on the screen door that one “kicked in” or “pulled out” and had a sign advertising something on that too AND never closed right and... inside we would go after saying something to someone (usually an old male) who sat outside on the porch stoop next to the “pop”... “machine”.
            These stores... had... no lights, no sales girls, NO cash register, no place to stand if you were a “large party”, no counter space, no... OPEN shelf space.  IT also had NO cracker barrel, pickle barrel, checker board or ole wood stove for the “old farts” to gather “around”.  That’s because these WERE NOT “old” “county stores”.  The only appliances were the “POP MACHINE” and the “gas pump” and THOSE were outside.  OTHERWISE the dark, dirty, fly buzz filled, crammed full of “EVERYTHING” “store” was “YOUR ON YOUR OWN” service that included Maggie, who, should she not know you and everything ABOUT you, was coolly eyeballing you, your companions, your car, your license plates and YOUR WALLET.  Get along little doggie.
            “WOW!” was and is my still effervescent opinion of “THAT PLACE”.  “GONE” is what I was “in there”.  I don’t know WHAT Grandma and MOM did... because I “WHO CARES!”.  SO the fishing tackle was “no good” but SHE SOLD bows and ARROWS; “real ones”.  And below the candy counter were boxes and boxes of “this stuff” that I didn’t know what it was but UP ABOVE where the boxes of candy bars “are” was this shelf with a “REAL” World War I GERMAN helmet.  “Huh.” to that because I never dared ask to touch it.  AND anyway, there was enough “other stuff” so I didn’t have to what I’d call “dwell” on that.  Behind me, which was at that candy case, was “a real lot” of “other things” that seemed to be of interest to “THEY” who were “with me”.  Then there was this little slit between the cases that “lead” behind the “counter” to this, well, “area” that had “there’s more” and this side door to this side room “out back” “TOO”.  Now to me, then, this seemed to have things like gloves and socks, stacks of clothes, boxes of this & THAT, some table top trays of smaller offerings I’d call “curiosities” because I wasn’t supposed to “touch those” but did handle EACH specimen in ...EACH tray... including the “snaps”, “smoke bombs”, “stink bombs” and well, that store sold EVERYTHING as far as I was concerned.  So the moment I was out of the car I wasn’t much of a problem to the “They” “go’en out” and IF I got winded... I’d go outside and drink a “Pop; anyone you want:  YOUCANOPENIT on theSIDEOK.” And sit... out there just like I was suppose to because anyone who came acted like I was supposed to be drinking a “Pop” there and that my mother and grandmother were SUPPOSE to be inside and go to talking to them about “The Doctor” and even every now and then some OLD guy would come and sit with me and tell me AGAIN about how he went “to school” with my Uncle and HOW he “couldn’t understand “WHY” he didn’t “BAIL OUT” like the “rest of the crew” and... did I know he “had a son” which I DID NOT except for these old farts telling me how he was “wild” and “married this French girl (French-Canadian) from Lewiston” and “had ah son” that NO ONE in my family EVER mentioned.  So I had pretty much... another soda “pop”... when I got into one of those HEAVY conversations and since “no one seems like to care” and “Here, get me one too; the cream soda” so I did for him “too”.



[1]:  There was a certain moment, about 1970-71, where I “learned” by accident, from a woman whose dead now, about how to “go around” to these “little stores; you know what I mean” that were “being forced to close” because “everyone” started going to those “new stores” outside of the towns that TODAY are “strip malls”.  At these little closed stores once run by the Maggie’s of the little world, I’d buy “everything”.  And I mean “everything”; the building would be “empty” and all the exterior “signs” “taken off” and even the “globe” to the gas pump... AND I would take the pump too but most time it was “TOOMUCHOF A PROBLEM” to “get” so I DID leave that.

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