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The Five and Dime by Steve Batson The five and dime in Richmond, a Mecca for the poor of the outlying hills. He walked the isles with the wary ease that mountaineers always seem to have when in the city. "May I help your sir," the clerk asked, using the tone she reserved for those who obviously had little money and much time? "Yes, a ma'am, I reckon you might," he said. "Where would a body find the Hoyt's cologne?" "Right over there," she said as she pointed in the general direction of the door. "Anything else?" "Yes ma'am, the nearest place where a body might find something to cook." She cut him off, "Right around the corner, you can't miss the grocer." She turned her back on the slim mountaineer and walked away with the contempt that city folks use to dismiss rubes fresh in from the country. He shuffled off . . . the long suffering walk of the poor and found the cologne, not in the direction she pointed but at the back of the five and dime. He selected the big bottle and went to the front of the store and slowly counted out ten pennies. Methodically he thanked the man who rang up the purchase and lumbered off in the general direction of the grocer. "Butterbeans are a nickel a pound," intoned the grocer. "How much you want?" The tall mountaineer said half a pound ought to do fine and took the small poke and offered his three worn coppers in return. "Much obliged," he said as he slipped out into the night. The next morning the clerk arrived early at the five and dime, she got her smock from the nail in the back of the store and was preparing to put it on. Her friend, who was really more than a friend, stuck his head in. "I just had to see you this morning. Last night down by the train yard at the cafe, I found the most wonderful gift and had to get it for you. I know how much you love beautiful flowers. Old scruffy mountain man was in the cafe and he had these seeds. They look just like butterbeans, but they smell like heaven. He called 'em Wild Mountain Roses. All you do is plant 'em and they grow into the most beautiful flower and it smells just like cologne. Everybody was getting them and I got the last four, just for you. Old fool, he must have really been on hard times, he let me have all four of them for just a quarter . . . all the others were paying a dime a piece." The lonesome whistle blew and the Gray Fox chuckled as he felt the pocketful of money he could surely use well, back in the Carolina mountains. The rails played the song of the free as he sojourned his way home. Daybreak in North Carolina and a South Carolina sunset . . . God surely never made anything as beautiful as a Carolina this morning in the mountains of the Blue Ridge. |
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God Save the South - Visit our members - Join the Southern Circuit - Dixieland Ring - Heartbeat of the Southland Browse the South through the Dixieland Ring . .
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