I came of age in a town with a Rexall drugstore. I can still see the classic orange and navy sign spelling the word in white neon. The store had one aisle but everything we needed.
Our town had a grocery store, two barbers, beauty salons, a shoe repair shop, local mechanics, and two ice cream stands. There were 12 churches and 13 beer joints, or about that. A sign at the edge of town said “3,000 Friendly People.”
Our Small Town lay along north-running Wills Creek, a stream that twists its way amidst the gentle, southern Ohio hills that still give the area its signature beauty. It wasn’t a big creek, but it was our body of water.
Small Town was a place where everyone went to church, or at least it seemed so. If you didn’t, people knew it and thought you were on the road to perdition.
We knew the baker, the barber, the grocer, the Police Chief. We knew where to get the best milkshakes, where a baseball game was always in play, and where to fish for catfish at “The Rocks” at the lake (an astounding six miles away).
Kids ran free but not wild. “It takes a village,” Hillary said, and conservatives pilloried her for it. But in our Small Town it was a lot like that. Do something you shouldn’t do and someone else’s Mother likely told you to straighten up or she’d call your Mom, who of course, she’d gone to high school with.
The only people wearing tattoos in Small Town were a few veteran sailors from the big war. The only people with un-naturally colored hair were a couple of elderly blue-haired ladies at the church. Drugs, when I was growing up, were something you bought at the Rexall to help cure your cough.
In Small Town, our elementary school was classically named for a Nineteenth Century President. I attended Lincoln Elementary School on Fifth Street. All the school buildings of my youth were made of dark red brick that screamed “Stability and Truth.” Two of those school buildings are still standing, relics of an ancient past.
In a wonderful symmetry I recognized only later my 1st Grade homeroom teacher was named Mrs. Holmes. I remember her as nice, thin, and that’s about it. But she taught me to read.
In 2nd Grade, I experienced the single greatest moral moment of my life, a tale I’ll reserve for another time.
I watched for steel pennies in the lunch money I helped collect in the 3rd Grade, learned geography in 4th Grade, figured fractions in 5th Grade, and was standing on the playground in 6th Grade when we got the news of JFK’s assassination.
When news from Dallas reached adult ears teachers quickly herded us into the main entrance hall. For the next couple of hours all students from grades four to six watched a small black and white television, the only one in the school, set high on a rolling cart. I don’t remember what I saw on TV, but I remember teary-eyed teachers, whispering adults, and a pervading quiet in the hall like we’d never known before. Two days later I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television.
Later that year on the same playground I watched my first and to this day only “Girl Fight.” I remember one of the girl’s names yet today. Of the girls in my class she was the last one I would’ve ever thought capable of this. She and the other unfortunate went at it fang and claw for several minutes until large-bodied adults corralled them. It was quite a show. I imagine others on that playground remember it too. Forgive me for smiling as I write.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
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