The Driver's Store

The Driver's Store

This was many years ago--decades, in fact. We used to go to the old wooden
store, made with thick boards cut from local trees near the big creek not a
hundred or so yards from the one-room gathering place. Small as it was, replete
with many of the items a young boy would water his mouth at; boxes of Red Hots,
large glass jars of two-cent bubble gum, various types of chocolate candy
bars--the Babe Ruth's, the Pay Days, the M & Ms. And a youngster turned his head
no more 'n an inch, and there'd be shelves of other items carried by
the small neighborhood stores in that time. Interesting items like kerosene lamps,

fishing gear, minor auto repair things, along with cans of oil and then, the medicine

aisle, where you could get band-aids, Ludens "menthol" cough drops for a dime that we

really liked to eat more as candy than treatment for coughs, and other items we steered

clear of except for practical jokes, such as Ex-Lax, and it's sour liquid counterpart--a 12-ounce bottle

of Magnesium Citrate. A type of bowel mover that shared certain qualities with a volcanic eruption.

This may seem like the ancient past, but it was when I was a boy, in the late 1960s.

Somehow, still the old Driver's Store hung on to the past, clinging to it like an old codger who found his
place to live under a bridge with a few cluttered but essential items for
survival--a few tin cans, cigarettes, a sleeping bag, a canteen of water, and a
transistor radio.

Driver's Store was like that old, slow fellow, he stayed in that place carved out
with sweat and worry and love. After all, he was always ready with a cigarette
for a stranger or a can of soup to open and give a stray dog passing by. Hoping to make a new friend in the bargain.

But the store, unlike such a worn-out man, was keeper of goods that were still current and
needed by our local folks. These were items such as a half gallon of milk, or a
dozen eggs--in those days just as often fresh-laid in the back of the store. So
when you asked for the eggs, old man Driver would turn and hold his finger up in
the air to hold you for a moment, he'd pass behind the doorway leading to the
back of the store, you'd hear him yell out to his wife and ask: "We got any
fresh eggs this morning?" And if they did, you'd wait a minute and here he would
come with a wooden box of some sort, and inside it were more than a dozen dark-colored eggs.

He'd ring everything up and begin a conversation that was worth the wait for
gossipers--and everybody wanted to catch up on what was going on around the
small community of Florence Hill. Though the details of the happenings
and concerns, and faces of those once all-important things and people have long
since faded, like the need my parents had for milk and eggs to feed growing kids for
breakfast.

This was long before Dallas had stretched out its thieving arms and
pick-pocketed small towns with giant corporate stores like Wal-Mart, and
especially the big, brightly lit, 24-hour, convenience stories with two dozen
gas pumps and more items now than the real grocery stores did in those days, when we
were growing up. Those would have put Driver's out of business in an instant. But
luckily in those days, those kind of stores were either miles away in Grand
Prairie or Dallas, or they did not even exist. You just had to drive miles to
the A & P or the Safeway--bon afide grocery stores--if you wanted to go ahead
and thrown-down for a two-hour shopping tour.

But Driver's was quick, just a mile or so down the road, past the Fish Creek
Bridge, and you turned to the right and pulled past the old dirt road and into
the one single car bay, covered by a weathered roof. You opened your car door, and looked
out at the two old-fashioned gas pumps, and if you needed gas it was there, and
if not, you just went on in for your milk and eggs, and conversation.

And he had an old butcher's area with a refrigerated display covered
with glass so we could press our noses against the big shop window of the meat
"department" at the several paltry portions of steak or pork or sausage Mr. Driver
offered for the day. Sometimes longer. The age of his meat didn't deter Mr.
Driver from keeping it on display over there in the corner of the shop.

And his quick-change from cashier to butcher was simple--to walk past the cash register, grab a
white butcher's apron, put it on as he walk the 10-feet over behind the
display, and rip off a big piece of wax paper so as to ready himself for your
order. Sometimes the age of the meat, or the rancid small, warned people off,
and Mr. Driver would smirk a little--his age-ragged face seeming in a constant frown as he
coughed with a smoker's affliction, hacking himself the few steps back to the
cash register.

That old machine was grand and ornate, probably made of solid
brass, with little bells that perked the ears when it opened and closed, after
he tacked in with his fingers the prices of the items, and hit the grand total.
It was like tiny church bells echoing through the place, almost a prayer against
the onrushing time and all it would bring. Sacred bells of commerce in those
rare mornings of youth. And soon, since you were too young to drive a car, it
was time to go. Daddy or Mama would smile at Mr. Driver as he lit up another of
an endless pile of cigarettes, and it was time to go back home so we kids could
eat. Such was the practical value of the store. The real intrinsic
meaning would occur to a few who used the store, only decades later, after the long
pecan orchard directly across the road, and the wide open prairies and hills
with miles of deep woods that followed the big Creek, were all replaced
with brand new stores and houses in all directions, packed in like gravestones
in a veterans cemetery. Heralding out the greatness of the past, and
unceremoniously paving over the tender, quiet moments of the pastoral past that
was a small community like Florence Hill, even into the 60s and 70s.

Finally the decades would pass and the store was just a place sitting by itself
nestled just as nondescript and rarely noticed, in its squalid little cubbyhole of time, but by
then Mr. Driver had long since passed away. The store just a nailed up
collection of forgotten boards and mornings and precious days of youth itself.
Holding within those boards treasures of time that no modern store could ever
rival or produce--the smile and hurried laugh of my mother carrying a sack of
groceries as she said goodbye to Mr. Driver, he smiled and puffed, and we looked
longingly at those candy bars that mama would never let us have as desserts for
breakfast like we wanted.

And there used to be another older type man who hung around the store--maybe it
was Mr. Driver's no-account brother who just stood around and griped about the
price of things, or maybe he was bumming a coke out of the red cold drink case
with the open-top, filled with ice, that he seemed to frequent. The old man's memory finally came
to me in a dream recently, giving shopping suggestions to customers, whispering
to us kids as we got lost in the few isles of the store, saying, "You boys
keep your grubby fingers to yourself." And in that dream the fellow--I never
knew his name--would say he "had places to go", he couldn't be helping out much
longer. Then, as we drove away, sometimes you'd see him sitting propped up
beside the wooden slats on the side of the building, looking at his pocket
watch, counting the time, a sad expression on his aging face with his ragged
clothes and mildewed smile.No place left to go but memories.

Our elementary school was just up the road and when we 'd get to walk home from
school, Mr. Driver's place was like a candy land for us kids who had saved our lunch
money for just such an outing. We'd been looking forward to it all day. Two or
three of us would walk in to the store with it's screen door that would slap at
you after you walked in, and Mr. Driver and his helper would watch us closely
as we hovered around the candy display, and we'd finally pick out a few things
and reach up to the thick glass of the counter and drop them down--all mixed in.

He'd just forgo the "formality" of sorting it all out and would just save time and ring

everything up at once, and then give usthe total. We'd spend several minutes reaching into our blue-jean pockets and
finally reach up and place out coins on the counter with a loud "smack" as the coins hit the glass.

He never seemed to mind that we took so long.

And then one of the kids, who had a smoker father, would toss out a hopeful,
"Mr. Driver, my dad is sick and he needs a pack of Marlboro's." Seems like most of the time Mr.
Driver would reward the kid for his guts, reach over with a knowing glance and get the pack from the rows of
cigarettes for sale against the wall behind him, toss it on the counter among
the candy, and say: "You kids know that smoking ain't good fer ya, right?" If we
had the money, all pitched in together, we would be bold enough collectively to
stand there and back the kid's caper. And pay for it. And then head toward the
door, often amid Mr. Driver's chuckles as he watched us hit the screen door,
down the three wooden steps, and down the road toward the bridge--where we would join
the imaginary old man who lived under the bridge, where we would urinate, trying
to see who could make a bigger stream down the hill, then laughing about it and
eating our candy, either under the bridge or in the cover of Fish Creek and her beautiful giant old trees that
ran much of the way home to our small rural neighborhood. And always we'd get
the pack of cigarettes open and pass a few sticks around, lighting them with a
box of wooden matches that somebody had, and puffing on them the way
our Hollywood heroes like Steve McQueen or Richard Burton would.

So on those days, we boys would walk on amid the autumn leaves, kicking the
piles as we went, puffing and talking about kids who got into a fight at school,
or how the teacher gave us a hard time, and wondering about what our moms would
have for supper. Or to see how high we could climb up a tree. Or to throw rocks
as far as we could into the evening sunlight toward the waters of a nearby pond.
And if we felt like it, we 'd stop at the tree house built 10 feet above the
creek with a few nails, old driftwood and pieces of rotted lumber, and we'd look at naked
women in magazines we'd found along the roadside and laugh, wondering what it all meant. And wanting to know
more. As boys will. And we'd talk and tell stupid jokes, until the sun began to lay
low along the prairie, and we knew it was time to go on home, half a mile up the
creek and across the woods.

We walked on in the dry creek bed puffing--we didn't know how to inhale in those
days--and we ate our candy bars. And we headed home amid laughter, and boyhood
stunts. And we would go on in time far beyond the dry creek, and the
camaraderie, and the laughter, into the relentless machine of modern life where most of us would be consumed by a world

of super technology and cold,calculating business. Grinding us from innocent, happy boys, and into aging men fraught with bills and
troubles and minds that would never again revisit those light, rare, smiling moments of
Mr. Driver and his little country store, that was a vital part of our lives for most of
childhood.