Time to go to town

Published:  Friday, May 9, 2008 (3 months ago)
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By Dick Suever

We kids went into Marks Market with Dad, which provided wonderful opportunities to run up and down the aisles and hide from one another while he talked with Jakey, one of his cronies, or anyone. Dad loved to talk!
Apparently, we made too much commotion one time because after that we had to wait in the car. My sister and I were not happy about being banished to the car. However, we soon found interesting things to see, hear and do.
Marks Market was only one block west of Main Street so we could see people coming and going. Birkmeier Monuments was across the street, so we were among the first to know when someone had gone to their eternal resting place or, were pre-planning for their final journey.
Beckmann Furniture Store was located next to Birkmeier’s. We guessed many of their customers were newly married, had just come into an inheritance or were planning to be around for a while.
Over on the other corner across from Schmit’s Grocery was a two-story building with an insurance company on the ground floor and an apartment on the upper floor. The couple living in that apartment had a son who was about 10 years old. That boy played on the streets and around the Miami and Erie Canal which runs through the center of town.
Somewhere along the way he had learned to cuss — better, or worse, than anyone I had ever heard. We noticed that he cussed even more when his mom and dad were within earshot. They just beamed as if he had come home from school with all A’s on his report card.
My sister and I significantly expanded our vocabularies by listening to him; however, we wisely chose not to repeat those blue words and bawdy phrases in the presence of our parents because we knew they preferred As on report cards. To be honest, fear was our stronger motivator.
While waiting in the car, we naturally looked for something to do to pass the time. We checked out everything in the glove compartment several times, activated the cigarette lighter to see the red glow, searched under the seats for coins that might have fallen out of pockets and drew faces and wrote names in the fog after breathing on the cold windows.
One time, we decided to have a contest to see who could wind the window up the quickest. When my sister was winning the race for the umpteenth, time I quickly grabbed a cane I had found lying on the floor in the back seat and jammed it into the opening above the window she was rapidly closing. Unfortunately, she was gifted with a very fast cranking motion that could not be stopped abruptly.
The sickening sound of breaking glass caused me to be introduced to real fear for the first time.Thank goodness we were not permitted to go into the store because that gave us plenty of time to think up several excuses, none of which our dad found to be acceptable when he finally came out of the grocery. He was still fuming when he told Mom what we had done.
Fortunately, as usual, she stuck up for us telling him he should not have made us wait in the car so long. Bless her!

Next week: Saturdays on the Town

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