Behold a small
Midwestern town on the way to nowhere. The
name of the town isn’t important.
There’s a set of train tracks on its edge that no railroad uses. There’s one empty highway which also serves
as the Main Street. If you were to fly
over our town in an airplane, you wouldn’t bother to look down. None of this really matters because this
story is not about a town.
There’s
a population of hard-working people in this town who all work together to keep
the town going. Everyone’s occupation
serves more as than just the capacity of employment. For instance, if my refrigerator stops
working, the appliance store manager will come directly to house that evening
so that my food does not spoil. This he
does, of course, without charge. That’s
just how our town works, each citizen serving each other.
Behold
a small general store in this small town.
A narrow shop on the main drag, it has old west taste and charm as if it
were from the old cow town days. There’s
a timeworn, squeaky wooden floor with an old soda fountain machine behind a bar
back by the pharmacy. There used to be
wagon wheels, lassos, and ropes decorating the walls with pictorial
representations of cattle drives, but they have been removed in favor of flat
screen TVs with videos of good looking men and women showing off the latest
fashions. There’s also a rumor that the
soda machine will soon be removed for more floor space. For the purpose of this story, the store’s
history does matter.
I’m seventy-eight
years old and I got canned this morning from the only job I’ve ever had. You see, I never really learned a trade that
would make me marketable, or even needed.
My job throughout the years has been menial, but important, and I’ve
learned enough over the ages to consider myself wise, despite what happened
this morning, but I’ll get to that later.
As for the
aforementioned mercantile, I started working there as a small boy after school
for Mr. Harbeson way back in 1945 when I was ten. My first job was to sweep floors and climb
ladders to the top shelf to take down merchandise for the customers. It was a nice way to make a nickel, and the
boss was a wonderful man, full of what you might call The Christmas
Spirit. What I mean is that he paid less
attention to his bottom line than he did to the pulse of his customers. Just like the refrigerator repair man, or the
telephone repair man, or the leading local expert on plumbing, Mr. Harbeson
felt his job was to lend a helping hand to the communtiy. When customers couldn’t afford necessities,
he let them charge it and pay it off as they could. In helping keep his books, I knew that some
families would never pay him back, and he was okay with that.
Mr. Harbeson was a
mentor to me. On warm days when the
store’s traffic was light, he would call me back to that soda machine and fill
two mugs with root beer. We would then
take the mugs out to the front of the store where he had built a park bench
with his own two hands. There we would
sit with the sun on our faces and talk about anything of interest, including
baseball, and later, girls.
When
I graduated high school, Mr. Harbeson offered me fulltime employment, and
seeing as the war was well over and America was booming, it seemed like the
smart thing to do. My duties were much
the same until in 1965 when Mr. Harbeson suddenly died and left the store to
his son, my younger by ten years.
I was immediately
given the unofficial title of manager which came with it the perks of being the
wisest person there, with no more salary benefits. Since I knew all the ins and outs of the
store, I was able to teach Mr. Harbeson’s son how to run the shop, as well as
sharing with him his father’s philanthropic wisdom. It wasn’t easy for him, so young, and having
to drop out of college to learn his father’s business, but my help so endeared
me to my mentor’s son that I was always consulted in the business affairs of
the shop, as well as acting as an uncle to his only kid. That is up until last year when he too passed
away.
This brings me to
the shop’s present owner, a boy fresh out of college who insists that I call
him Mr. Harbeson even though I’m his elder by some fifty plus years and helped
to raise him. I suppose that didn’t go
over very well with an old curmudgeon like me.
You see, when he took over, I ceased to know anything of any
importance. All that the store had stood
for has been replaced with fancy new ideas about cataloging and inventory,
marketing and promoting, and if you can’t work a computer, you have no
knowledge or place in this shop. This is
why he saw to it that I should come in and pick up my final paycheck today, the
morning of Christmas Eve.
But sad as this
story seems, it isn’t actually about me.
It’s about what I saw outside of the store this morning.
Late December in
the Midwest brings with it harsh north winds and snow that comes in from the
side. The temperature hovers around the
freezing mark in the afternoon and plummets well below at night. This morning was not any different. The unforgiving snow pelted my old face. Though I had my overcoat, I was frozen to the
bone. I also admit that I was in a sour
mood, knowing that a lifetime of dedication would be settled in a matter of
minutes, ingloriously.
Forcing one foot
in front of the other, I trudged through the snowdrifts on the unshoveled
sidewalk. Before I got to the front
door, I saw something. On Mr. Harbeson’s
handmade bench at the door sat a young mother, clad in thin wraps, her baby
tightly wrapped up and huddled next to her mother’s breast. In a small town where everybody knew
everyone, my old eyes did not recognize her.
As I approached,
forgetting my own troubles, she looked up pleadingly at me, snowflakes burning
her eyes. They burned my eyes as
well. Embarrassed, self-consumed, and slightly
ashamed, I turned my gaze from her shivering figure and entered the store to
face the music, wondering why she wasn’t indoors.
Though I had
walked through that door a million times in my lifetime, everything seemed
different. The lighting, the tone, the
mood, even the floor which was freshly waxed.
In fact, that bench outside that Mr. Harbeson and I sat on to talk about
life, and which the mother was now sitting on in the blinding snow was the only
thing that seemed original.
I walked through
the store, back to the office to pick up my paycheck, the third owner sitting
at his big, fancy oak desk and donning a suit and tie, his shiny, black
wingtips poking out from under the massive pile of wood. He was consumed with one of two laptops on
his desk and didn’t even acknowledge my presence. Apparently sensing my presence, he reached
into the left-hand desk drawer and pulled out an envelope with my name on it. Never taking his eyes off his computer, he
held up the envelope for me to take.
When I did, he said, “Nice knowing you, old timer.”
Old age can bring
with it an acidic tongue, especially when dealing with arrogant youth. Though I had spent the evening before
memorizing a monologue that would put him in his place, I held my tongue. I just couldn’t get the image out of my head
of a young woman with her baby, stuck in the blowing snow. It was a thought that I had to do something
about.
Before I left the
store for the last time, I stopped at the glass door and peered out at the
bleak scene, half-wondering if the woman and her baby were still there. Sure enough, there she sat on that same bench,
an inch of snow collecting on her shivering form.
As my heart broke,
I was interrupted at that very moment by a large family who had just checked
out. In a town where everybody knew
everyone, this family was the poorest.
Every time the church had taken up an offering for the poor, this family
of seven kids were always the ones on the other end of the collection. It was a family of share crop farmers that
Mr. Harbeson, my second boss, had helped out many times. His father, my original boss, had helped out
their parents. I also knew that the new
owner had called their debt a few months ago, asking me to deliver the news,
and they were forced to come up with the money within thirty days. Miraculously they had.
As they filed past
me, I saw that each child held a sack of groceries in his or her hand. The mother held a box of diapers. Having worked there forever, it was more than
I had ever seen them buy.
The door opened
and a rush of cold air punched me in the face until the door closed. The young mother rose from her seat on the
bench, snow cascading off her frail form. What conversation took place between her and
the family I can only guess at. I
suppose that doesn’t matter, because the family presented the groceries to the
young woman and they ushered her away from the storefront.
I stepped out into
the cold air and watched them trudge through the snow towards the family’s
house a few blocks away.
And here I have
lamely related to you a moment in time that no one will remember as important,
a moment that occurs in any given town on any given day, Christmas Eve or
not. Whether charity is given or purse
strings are closed, it exists. It always
will. So as I stood in the cold with my
severance check in my clutch, I sat down on that old trusty bench. I thought about the wisdom Mr. Harbeson had
shared with me. The charity he had given
had been passed forward by the most unlikely of people, and from my vantage
point with my old eyes, I was able to behold his spirit once more. After that, the snow didn’t sting so much.
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