Today's topic is just some random memories. Spring is here and I thought I'd walk to my mailbox barefooted. Ouch!! I used to run around barefooted all the time when I was pre-school age and on into my pre-teen years. It was nothing. The only thing that ever bothered me was when the parking lot asphalt got really hot and if you could survive that you got a wonderful cool payoff once you entered the department store, which for me was most likely either Big K or Clarks. It was a rare occasion if I got to go to Roses and if we were going all the way out there my mother would have made me wear shoes. The "no shirt, no shoes, no service" era had begun, but store's didn't seem to care if children were barefooted. Once I reached my teens it was flip-flops in the spring and summer.
The department stores mentioned are long gone from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, but loom large in my mind. When I was just 4 or so my parents would just turn me loose in the toy departments when they shopped. It was probably only for a quarter of an hour or less, but it seemed like forever. There was the one time in Clarks when I had played with the toys long enough that at first I got bored, but then grew terrified that my father had forgotten me so I started crying and a person stocking the shelves took me to the manager's office which was up this big flight of stairs while they paged my father. I would sometimes go back and glance up those long stairs when I was older (say 10 instead of 4) and wonder how I could have been so scared.
My father, nor my mother, would ever have forgotten me. I'm an only child and while we too poor for me to be spoiled with material things, I suppose I was spoiled by their love. Now that both of my parents have left this world I think about them often. I'll be driving down the road and suddenly I'll think about my father. It won't be some Hallmark card event either. I'll think about riding down the highway in a blue Ford Ranger he owned. I'd have my head out the window and he'd tell me to get my head back in the vehicle. Then I think about how interesting he was in his inimitable grouchy way. He'd served twice in the U.S. Army. He'd got out after being drafted and then re-enlisted to serve in Vietnam circa 1965-67. He went to the vocational school in Shelbyville where he learned to weld and lay bricks. He worked at the Nashville Bridge Company for several years before trying to make a go as an independent bricklayer doing contract work. He worked at Clark & Iron Metal when I was around 4 and then went back to them when I was a senior in high school. He managed the country singer Jimmy C. Newman's ranch during most of high school days.
My mother, on the other hand, bounced around at a few places when I was small, but ended up working 30 something years at Greer Stop-Nut Smyrna which made stop nuts primarily for the airplane industry. I still remember the smell of the place from the times I waited for her to get off work as I sat in the small cafeteria area and also the smell of the industrial grease on her clothes. I know she ran tapping machines, but there was probably more to it than that. Factory work is not for everyone, but the company was good to her.
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