It’s Not There Anymore

Today I was think­ing about a place that I barely remem­ber. It’s not that the mem­o­ries them­selves are hazy; there are just so few of them. I grew up in a very small town in the mid­dle of Indiana farm land. You might say it’s a town that time for­got, but these days time has a bet­ter mem­ory than it used to.

It’s the same town where my father spent his boy­hood. Dad grew up in the 60s; and by the time I was in grade school, the town he knew had become a shadow of itself. But even in shadow, some sil­hou­ettes are more clearly defined than oth­ers; and in our small town, there were edges that had not yet com­pletely blurred into the dark mass we call what used to be.

Ruch’s Confectionary was one of those edges – a long, tall build­ing with heavy, creak­ing doors and dis­play win­dows stuffed with toys, games and adver­tis­ing dis­plays that had gone out of date ten years ago. The “Open” sign was only turned occa­sion­ally, when­ever Mrs. Ruch felt like being there.

Dad used to talk about tak­ing a break from his paper route to sit in Ruch’s and drink an ice cold Coca Cola and eat a bag of bar­be­cue chips. It sounded like heaven. So, one sum­mer day, I decided to take a break from my own paper route and enjoy a Coke and a snack. The open sign was turned – Mrs. Ruch was in and I was in luck.

I pushed the door open with both hands and saun­tered to the soda counter. Sitting on an old high stool I gazed around and took in the shelves that ran floor to ceil­ing. They were packed solid with mer­chan­dise I barely rec­og­nized. Trinkets, games and toys lined the walls and even fell onto the floor; the smell of mildew stung the air and I felt as if I was tres­pass­ing time itself.

I sat and waited for Mrs. Ruch to make her way to the counter and won­dered if I was allowed to be here. I felt as if I had stepped into a scene never writ­ten for me; I was a stranger in time. I had no busi­ness here. Almost as a protest, I ordered a Coca Cola and a bag of chips when Mrs. Ruch shuf­fled in from the back room. I sat in silence and tried to imag­ine what it must have been like before the air went stale — before the life began to slowly fade into the shad­ows. ¶