Maggie's Store
Part Seven
So
I’d sit on the slope porch of the store and wait with my “pop” and I admit that
I really didn’t mind the old farts because they actually killed off the time
pretty much with their stories about like how they put a car up on the roof of
the hardware store with my uncle and no one in town could figure out how that
happened or about when my uncle got married was because they were gonna “expel
him” from Bowdoin College but he “found out” if he got married he’d be expelled
for “just that” “she was a Catholic girl you know”. Well, he DID get married and DID get expelled and DID have a
son that no one ever mentioned and I have STILL never ever seen but also
Bowdoin DID put his name on monument in the middle of the campus of him “died
in the service of” as well as having been “there” (at Bowdoin) under the World
War II column. HE SHOWED THEM,
HUH! NO wonder he wouldn’t bail
out: What for? To end up sit’en out there drink’en ah
“pop” with me at Maggie’s store?
MEANWHILE
back inside the second house They was wing-wang’en Maggie like ah paddle ball
around the five or six generations (of which she was “the last”) of “her”
“stuff” and this had a curious choreography of duplicity by both parties that
even I could sort of figure. SEE
Maggie would “get stuff” and it’d go in the store OR into the two front rooms
of the second house if it would fit better. Now she lived in the back of the second house in these two
room; “the kitchen”[1] and a “room
off the kitchen” with a door “out the back” in between. OTHERWISE the rest of the house was
“closed off” and that included the wicked heavy dark drapes hanging over EVERY
doorway so I was always trying NOT to get those in my face but always DID so
I’d sneeze and was sure to be lucky that was ALL that happen. Anyway: OUT in those front rooms, after going in the FRONT DOOR because
Maggie was like my grandmother when it came to “letting people in” “where we
live” and I add that it DID always seem that THEY DID get into her kitchen
anyway but rural formalities ALWAYS were “followed” EACH TIME... . ANYWAY, out there began the “in the
house” part of each visit and, presuming everything went along well with Mr.
Wallet doing his part to “show”, it DID all end up way out by the small barn
and the “get’en to get the things loaded”. That “show” of Mr. Wallet was pretty well done by my
grandmother for she had this little “trick” she called of having this wad of
money that she “always want ‘em to SEE” and that means even if she had to drop
the damn wad all over the FLOOR of where ever she was. I’ve even seen her do it (“the drop”)
out in front of ah barn in a wind storm.
Anyway, that was part of it; stuffing Maggie full dollar bills like she
was a Thanksgiving turkey.
MEANWHILE Maggie had her game plan that pretty much she’d find a
“reason” to have Them “HAVE TO” go into the house; usually because she’d “got”
something and that, after going around and around in an antiquarian quadrille,
would “lead” to the “rest of the house”.
Now what it was ACTUALLY was that Maggie didn’t know ANYTHING about what
she had AND the stuff she “picked up” so, in fact, most of the latter weren’t
“as good” as the former “IF we can JUST get to IT”. AND she KNEW THAT too but, of course followed rural
etiquette as well as ANYONE does, so, what with wanting the dollars as bad as
my grandmother knew she did, everybody was always going to the same place but
just had to ride on the train to get there. See: That’s why
I’d “seen” the framed medals before They “found it” but still They “found it”
because it took like sixty years to “get around” to “springing that”. THEY, on the way home, would always talk
about the stuff they “could see” or “saw” and would “try” or “go after” “next
time”. But, you know, I had the
chairs in my face and was gonna barf then so I never really ever mentioned
anything I SAW.
[1]: THEY called it “the kitchen” but most
people would look at it as a kitchen been once but was now buried under all
this "stuff" AND had all “her cats” “in there” so one’s not gonna sit
down and “EAT” “anything”.
No comments:
Post a Comment