Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:
http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/
or read it below…
HARDWARE HITCH
Hitching up his trousers by grabbing his belt up front to cover a lower layer of belly fold, he struts into the hardware store as if a potbellied stove were still radiant, as if a cracker barrel still dropped crumbs onto an oil-soaked concrete floor, as if laughter and storytelling were still saturating the air.
Faint fragrances of topsoil and fertilizer and WD-40 and unfinished lumber and old rubber flanges remind him of the odor of Lifebuoy soap and metal filings from key-makng machines that used to dominate hardware stores more years ago than he dares to count.
His Daddy and his Daddy’s Daddy hitched their pants up, too, way back when, in search of nomadic waist lines.
But this new hardware store no longer attracts hitching-up men because the potbellied stove and cracker barrel have been moved aside to accommodate central air and heat, more display space, additional stock turnover, busier and less-connected customers.
Gossip and news and palavering are unknown here, so the store proprietors don’t have any idea what’s going on in the surrounding neighborhood.
Instead of sharing eye-to-eye anecdotes about neighbors and common issues and genealogies, the proprietors and customers now obtain their gossip and news on talk shows and via social media.
Chatter and noise caulk the previous silences but tell the pants-hitcher nothing about life-saturated happenings…the newborn baby down the street, the latest success of a nearby friend, oh so important life-changes and twists of fate that overlie daily flesh-and-bone existence.
Former cracker barrel potbellied men still come into the store and hitch up their pants, but they are methodically processed by clerks whose eyes glaze past them, into the virtual-cloud mist
Jim Reed (c) 2018 A.D.