Today I sat quietly on my cane chairin front of the Walgreens on Poplar Level Road waiting for Tarc-3. I looked down the hill where the Kernen’s Grocery stood when I was in the first grade at Holy Family School. I was sitting on the spot where our family bungalow once stood when my sister Jean swallowed a penny after my mother’s cousin performed a magic trick at our Grandfather Link’s home on Crittenden Drive.
Sitting there, I recalled standing on the porch of that bungalow and watching my brother Paul carry a kitten up the hill from the grocery store to a nice blanket-lined box in our kitchen. Walking up that hill, Brother Paul passed the mother cat going down the hill carrying one of her kittens on a return trip to the back room of the grocery where she preferred to rear her family. In the end, Brother Paul and the grocery staff deferred to the mother cat, and in time, the kittens found good homes with customers of the grocery.
My great ambition in those days was to grow as tall as my Brother Paul so I could bag groceries and become old enough to drive the green grocery truck for deliveries. I forgot to cancel that wish. When I grew up I drove a van and delivered paintings to art shows instead of canned goods to customers.
Today I walked to the corner of Walgreens and looked at the back of the store where Trevillian Way curves to head toward the Fincastle area. The back of the store is where Mrs. Newall’s house was located. I talked to her dog, Skippy, through the fence every day and when she decided she was getting up in years and could no longer care for him, she made arrangements with my parents for Skippy to become my dog. He would be my companion for years and would romp with me through the fields when we moved to McKay Street.
It is a good thing to sit quietly in front of Walgreens once in a while so that Brother Paul, Mother Cat, and Skippy can again, for a brief moment stand beside me and look down the hill where our grocery once stood.