I learned at a very young age that Tuesdays and Fridays were very special days. Life was very isolated on the ridge. Amazon would have been wonderful at that time. It was several miles from our house to Roger Taylor's store in McKinley, and even farther to the Big Salem metropolis which we managed to visit almost every Saturday for 'trading', grinding feed, maybe a movie, and socializing. If you needed any vitals in between, you relied on the school buses converted to a version of Walmart on wheels. The red one came from Sparksville on Tuesday, the silver one came from Oxonia on Friday.
I would start getting excited when Mom would start chasing
the chickens and gathering eggs into a basket. In season, she would often
collect some vegetables from our vast garden, apples and peaches from the
trees, and other items that could possibly be 'traded' for her desired items.
The chicken legs would be tied with binder twine, and the other things in bags
or baskets. I could always feel her happy excitement as she prepared for this
event.
Mom, our dogs, maybe a brother/sister, and I would walk over
a half mile in our gravel and dirt lane to meet the peddler. They could come
anytime within a two hour window so we got there at their earliest anticipated
arrival. The chickens were amazingly patient during this wait. The dogs would
roam for a limited range into brush and weeds. If it was a long time, I would
talk Mom out of an apple or peach.
We could hear it coming minutes in advance as the bus geared
down and raced its engine to pull the big hill by Ora Stewart's house. When it
pulled up, the driver would open the school bus doors with a big 'Hello'. Mom
would lift me up onto the bottom step making sure that I didn't go further. Her
first task was to negotiate with him for the prices of her bounty. He would
dangle the chickens on a hook on a hand-held scale to weigh them. Then, he
would tie them into a crate on the back bumper. The other items were counted
and placed in bins on shelves along the sides of a center aisle. I learned to
respect Mom's business sense in her quest to maximize her sales.
Next she would go down her mental list of the items that she
needed - baking soda, white thread, bag of navy beans, ... until she ran out of
money. She always reserved enough to buy a candy bar for each of us that
accompanied her on this mission. Usually, it was a Hersey bar, but sometimes he
would have a ZERO OR CLARK CANDY BAR! My older brother would usually find a way
to finagle most of mine from me.
Those moments with my Mom are such precious memories. I wish
that I had the opportunity to thank her for those amazing experiences.
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