ARCHIVE

Remembering the old guys at the drugstore

I've had another glut of letters and e-mails the past two weeks from Peabody High School alumni. The messages were in response to the second Main Street newsletter that went out a couple of weeks ago. It really is fun to hear from so many folks that I don't know, but whose stories and names I have heard over the years.

When I was working for Jeannie Maples at Towne and Country Clothing downtown in the late 1970s and early 1980s I used to take my break at the drug store. There was almost always a gang of "old guys" sitting around one of Don's tables drinking coffee, rambling, and reminiscing about things that had happened decades before.

They were gentlemen and they tolerated my peripheral presence. But they drove me crazy with their talk! I was a bit of a newbie to the community (having only lived here 10 or 12 years at the time) and I wasn't familiar with many of the old names. But even if I had been, it wouldn't have mattered because that bunch seldom used names. They didn't have to. They all knew the stories, the characters, and the end of the tales. I was the only one there who didn't know what they were talking about.

There was a whole group of them — Tote Egy, Jesse Stucky, Art Stallwitz, Kenny Windsor, Tod Porter, Jesse Seibel, Carroll Herbert, Fred Smith, Bill Avery, and others. Something on the street would set one of them off — a person passing by on the sidewalk or some old car or pickup crawling past the store to the stop sign.

The story would be launched. "Looks like old John — what was his name?" one of them would ask. "Oh you know, he was married to that red-headed widow from Joplin . . . had all those freckled faced kids . . . one of them shot a deputy in Butler County in a bank robbery right after he graduated. Oh, what was his name? They lived out there on the three-mile corner, just south of that big barn that those kids from the Methodist youth group set on fire one Halloween having a weenie roast. Remember? It was raining that year and they were on a hayrack ride and ducked into that barn to get out of the rain. Ended up trying to cook hot dogs and dry out a little and they burned the whole place down. Killed a horse as I recollect. The minister really came under fire for that one because there weren't enough chaperones. Remember him? He was the one who preached those hell-fire and brimstone sermons and then slept through the choir's numbers just like he was worn out from spitting out all that damnation. You remember — his boy was on the basketball team and got into that big fight in Moundridge at the regionals. What year was that? It had to be the year we got all that ice and snow every time there was an out of town game because I can remember the caravan of cars creeping along just to follow the team. Boy, there will never be another coach like that one . . . what was his name? You know, he lived up there on Walnut in that house that the school owned at the time. His wife worked at the city office and their daughter tried to jump off the fire escape because she didn't get a date to the prom or something and the police chief talked her down . . . what was that police chief's name?"

I swear that is how the narratives went! It made me nuts. And the strangest part was all the other coffee shop regulars around the table were sitting there in rapt attention nodding and mumbling, "uh-huh," "yup," and "oh, yeah, I remember him." They all knew what the speaker was talking about. I was totally lost, hadn't a clue.

But that was nearly 25 years ago. Lately I find myself, from time to time, in the presence of some people my age or a little older who launch into a similar yarn and guess what? Suddenly I do know the stories and the characters; I know where the old "so and so place" is on the correction line and who lived there for 25 years. I know about the children who were raised there and if they succeeded or not. Sometimes names are offered, but usually none are needed. I am a nodder and a mumbler in such conversations. Yikes!

So it is with some satisfaction that I read the letters and e-mails of people whose names and activities I have heard in these conversations for many years. It helps put real people behind the legends that are spun over coffee and cinnamon rolls.

Not being a native, I will never know all of the old tales, but at least I now know the names of the kids who set the barn on fire. Except I can't remember . . .

— SUSAN MARSHALL

Quantcast