Last night it rained, but I missed it. The streets were still wet this morning so I didn’t miss it by much. I caught the annoying bug, but it wasn’t a cricket but rather a smokeippus alarmus more commonly known as a smoke alarm. It was time to change the battery.
Today is overcast and humid. We may even have more rain later. Movie night is postponed until tomorrow just in case. Someone is cutting his lawn, but the sound is muted in the thickness of the air. The feeders are popular this morning.
The red store and the white store were where we went for milk or bread or whatever else my mother needed. The white store was run by two old ladies, sisters I think. The red store was just one guy who smoked a lot. The store had a haze. The two ladies were patient and pleasant. Their store had a penny candy case, and they’d wait until we’d picked what we wanted. It was never easy. Sometimes I went for the hard candy like Mary Janes, Bit-o-Honey or the square candy with green mint and yellow banana flavors. All of them lasted a long time which was their appeal. Other times I went for the small, chocolatey, licorice candies with the racist name. We didn’t realize the meaning of that word. To us it was just the name of the candy. Sometimes I’d buy the paper with all the colored dots. The only problem was a bit of paper sometimes came with the dots. The ladies also had nickel bars, but we seldom had that much money. The Red Store had everything. The store was small and the aisles narrow, but every space was filled. There was even a frozen case on the far wall. I also remember a display of everything Hostess. It had penny candy, but the owner wasn’t very patient. Sometimes, though, I had to bike there to get what my mother wanted because the white store didn’t have it.
I miss the little stores. They helped make a neighborhood.
