Mom's Minit Mart...with a name like that you just know it has to be a convenience store. Of course you'd be right, but not just any convenience store. Mom's was first convenience store that opened in my small hometown. Before the advent of Mom's you could count on everybody being closed on Sundays and every other inconvenience that gave purpose to the concept of a store that would serve to fill in the gaps, adequately to the point where calling it "convenience" would reap financial benefits.
Mom's, or simply The Minit Mart, as some preferred to call it, was located directly across the street from the High School. For a long time the students were allowed to walk to Mom's for a microwave burrito and coke in lieu of the tasteless cafeteria food they would otherwise be expected to eat. There was a safety issue, in that one had to cross what could sometimes be a busy road in getting to the store; since it was a round trip they were required to cross that road twice. Luckily no one had ever been hit by a car.
There were a lot of people who chose to get their lunch at the Minit Mart. So many that the manager of the store decided to put up a sign that read:
5 STUDENTS AT A TIME LIMIT, PLEASE
THANK YOU
A good idea when I think of it now. But at the time it seemed the greatest inconvenience, especially in colder weather, to have to wait outside until the next guy came out. He was limiting the number of students so that he'd have a measure of control and be able to keep his eye on as many as he could. He wasn't about to have some punk freshman find a sweet spot out of his view where he could stuff some merchandise down his baggy trousers.
Everyone's prep routine was basically the same. Pick a burrito out of the wall refrigerator, slam it into the microwave...and these were days before every home in America owned a microwave oven, these were the days when you could find them in stores like Mom's just before they began to be released to the public. They packed a lot more wattage than the typical home microwave model when they eventually flooded the market. I only bring that up to place into perspective just how searingly hot those microwaved burritos from Mom's Minit Mart were. The only kind of burrito they stocked was called a "red hot burrito" and it was legendary for it's slowburn. The heat of the food combined with the spices and peppers come together to exact mighty revenge upon your tongue and the inside of your cheeks and palate. No problem, simmer it down with a 150 ounce Dr. Pepper that's weighing down your right hand while your left burns with the unholy sensation caused by red hot chili peppers and the like.
Jerry didn't have a whole lot of friends. He lived in a very enviable position. He went to High School in that small town and was one of the noon throng who chose to get their grub at Mom's Minit Mart. As a bonus, his home was only a couple hundred yards south of Mom's. This meant that he would always have an excuse to stop at Mom's Minit Mart to...well, face it, he was loitering. But he liked to talk to the old lady behind the counter and grumpy old granny she was she nevertheless acted like she liked him a little bit. Jerry and Lola, for that was her name, enjoyed each other's company. He rarely bought anything during these stops.
Jerry would sit on a concrete block situated directly to the right of the entrance door. Coming home from school meant that it was natural for him to be carrying along a notebook and a school text or two. Lola surely presumed that's what they were for, he was a student, after all.
Next to Jerry and his concrete slab of a throne was the magazine rack. Jerry was extraordinarily fond of magazines. Most any kind. He'd read almost anything if it's in a magazine. So when Jerry was at Mom's he always enjoyed looking through all the new issues of practically every magazine on that rack as well as the new comic books that were on a separate wire rack.
If you knelt down in front of the magazine rack and looked underneath the upper level shelf you'll find a "hidden shelf" stocked from one end to the other with glossy magazines designed to titilate and facilitate the pubescent male. Jerry was the dictionary definition of the pubescent male, though he may not have thought of himself in this manner. Perhaps he did, it would not shed a negative light on his prior testimony. These periodicals performed their essential tasks through the use of excessive and completely gratuitius nudity, airbrushed and designed to reprogram the pubescent and adolescent brain to desire a very limited number of body types...like, maybe 2 if you're lucky...I've lost the thread of me issue.
Jerry didn't know one way or the other if Lola cared that he was bending down on one knee taking in an eyeful of the glorious magazine covers that teased him. "You have no right," he would think. "I can't stand this. I've been uber klepto before, I ain't lookin' to exceed any of those past glories, just to git wot I won't and want what I got to git."
He took in the rags' names, so many that had become familiar over the past couple of months. Playboy, of course, was a mainstay. Had to have that one, for the articles, you know? No kidding. I learnt how to read real real good from Hefner's stapled book. I read Joyce Carol Oates. I read John Updike. I think I read Kurt Vonnegut. Playboy Advisor, man, did I learn how to be an expert in all things sexual! Heady interviews, man, you can't deny that. Seriously, man, the Interview is worth the cost of the entire magazine, bro! This is the truth! Everything else is just the sweet, sweet bonus! Do with it as you will. You may want to keep it hidden between your mattresses or under a chest of drawers. Somewhere your parents can't find them. I made the mistake of being a bit too open with my penchant for "Adult magazines". I shoulda known they would disappear during the week I was at church camp. Mother...Father...how could you have betrayed me like this?
Mother...
Father...
How could you betray me like this? You hated each other before I was born. No love lost for the firstborn spawn. I grew up in a house and a yard with a tree in the front and a tree in the back. One year tornado came through and left that house as good as new but those trees, oh my Jesus, those trees had been uprooted, both of them, and laid down on their sides as pretty as you please.
Jerry...can you hear me? I'm starting to have doubts.
I understand. Keep pushin' on.
I got to tell you one more thing about that house. It's really about the tornado too. And this is the God's honest truth, if I'm lying I'm flying, I don't take this kind of thing lightly so I'd appreciate it if you'd do exactly as I do in those respet. But listen and behold, for gospel truth is about to be told...
My dad's bedroom faced the east. I'm not sure if there's any significance in that but there very well may be and if anyone who reads this knows anything about it I wish they'd contact me soon as they can...a day or two after the tornado and we were surveying the damage. It looked as if it was going to be mainly the trees. We'd been lucky. That season several twisters pestered Lincoln County, we spent an unnatural amount of time underneath the ground.
I saw something shining on the ground in the brush outside my dad's bedroom window. I bent down to pick it up. The most uncanny thing...a practically perfect circle of glass! It could only have come from one place...but no! How? How could it be that there was a circle the exact same size cut out of the window pane?!?! It fit beautifully.
To this day I can't suss out in my mind how that circle came to be cut from the glass pane. I've heard of many strange stories about the things left behind in the wake of Oklahoma tornadoes but this one, to my mind at least. is right up there with the most baffling of 'em.
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