We stayed up until 2am, watching Latter Days, which Chuck had not seen before. I just love Steve Sandvoss. I also think I can say that twice and mean it. I just love Steve Sandvoss. Then we retired and I was so glad Wulf had a real bed to sleep in this time because last year in West Virginia he had to sleep on one of them fold out sofas that are so uncomfortable and always make me think of my spastic cousin John who I have no idea if he is dead or alive. It was a good slumber party, and we kept our wits about us.
We slept in until 9 am the next morning and rose to a gorgeous warm day. A breakfast of grits and cantelope and Kona coffee. Got us ready for a day in the car. We tried calling Jack, who was unable to join us. He was there is spirit though. We set out antiquing. I took them first to the Mayberry store. It is a ramshacked old place, the only remnant of the town that was once there. My cousin Dell runs it, having inherited it from her Aent Addie, when she died a few years ago at 102. She comes out there and opens it up in the winter some days when she feels like it, for something to do. There is not much traffic on the parkway in the winter. Then we went to Meadowns of Dan, another soon to be ghost town as the Virginia Department of Highways, Transportation and Destruction of the Environment in their mission to cover as much of the earth as possible with asphalt, built a by pass around the town the other year and now the tourist dollars miss it an continue unabated to I77 and other destinations. They have an excellent crap store there. You can buy all kinds of crap from Confederate flags to slated hams slices to all kinds of jelly, refrigerator magnets, cds, books, stoneware, old jars, toys, moon pies, possum pies and Blenheim Gingerale.
We had lunch there. Ate out on the covered porch at an octagonal table and marveled at the absolute disgustingness of Cane Cola, which is so saturated a syringe would melt before you could inject yourself with it, I think that is why it comes in real glass bottles.
From there we headed east on 58 to a junk shop I knew of, old building leaning forward propitiously, it will be out in the road one day and people will have to lay on the brakes to keep from hitting it. Most of the good stuff had been move from it to a shed next door where granny and grandson hovered around a kerosene heater and let us have the run of the place.
Only Chuck could come to Appalachia and go to a junk shop and find a book on Frank Sinatra. There was shit everwhere. Someones photo album from 1918 of their escapades, no names, a few locations, people who had lives documented their fun, their happiness and well clothers adventures just after the great war. Shelves of glass, 45 rpm records, butter churns, and on a shelf, waiting for us as a sign from the beyond that had bring us together: a hat box. "Resistol Self Conforming Hats" it said.
Now we know why Jack wore a Resistol. He was conforming to no one.
No I didn't. What would I do with it? Sometimes having a picture of something is better than having the thing itself.
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2598079 times)