Oh yay…
another problem around the house
needed fixing and it hadn’t been fixed…
I usually don’t take on that type of difficult work…
I got a friend who is a handyman
even though he’s a shady character like most handymen are…
he hadn’t been bailed out by anybody yet after his last arrest
I got stuck with the job…
there’s some of those ‘big box’ stores by me with like 189 aisles
I didn’t feel like getting my ten miles of walking in
I went to a small ‘Mom and Pop’ hardware store by my place…
a relic from another era…
I’d lived in the same spot for ten years
passed it a million times and never gone inside
pulled into the empty parking lot
with faded lines and unintentional speed bumps…
one or two other customers
I don’t think they knew where the hell they were…
I started walking around the store
quiet it was; as a library or quieter if you’ve been to a regular library lately…
strange feeling
--this place was like the one I used to go to with my Dad when I was little…
he was really handy around the house…
built a room addition, a porch, fixed up the basement, changed a transmission and a million other things…
I didn’t get that DNA passed down to me
honestly I wasn’t interested in learning that stuff at the time…
there were ball games to play, girls to chase, beer to drink…
I felt this weird sense of sentimentality
I walked up and down each aisle
I’d see a tool or something that would trigger a memory of some project…
...I wish now that I had paid more attention to what he was doing…
the hum of the fluorescent lights was like an old song—a comfort sound
—long lost memories... memories of happy times and times long gone...I found what I needed, but I wasn’t in no hurry to leave…
it sounds hokey, but I could almost feel his presence with me…
for a short time, I felt like I was nine or ten years old again…
the store was closing so I went to the cashier to pay…
I wanted to share my feelings with someone
but I knew the 20 or so year old cashier wouldn’t have any idea of what I was talking about or care
