I grew up in a very small town in the rural south…the DEEP rural south actually, an especially humid and mosquito laden region of coastal South Carolina known as the Lowcountry. Although it wasn’t exactly the small town from a Norman Rockwell painting, it did have the stereotypical dirt roads and country stores. It had its share of toothless characters and town loonies, as well as a few of its own home-grown blueblood aristocrats. Football was king and our preacher would often cut the Sunday sermons short if a big game was on TV. We had the Liberty five and dime, a Dairy Queen, and lots of old antebellum homes. The classic Lowcountry design had signature tall ceilings with fans to circulate the air and wide porches with their bead board ceilings painted haunt blue to keep the spirits away, a Caribbean tradition courtesy of the slave trade. They also had full length windows to create some relief from the sweltering summer heat, but the most significant feature of a Lowcountry home was its oversized closets, just right for hiding the skeletons of long held family secrets.
Now, don’t get me wrong...growing up in a small town does have its advantages. It’s a good thing when everyone knows your name or at least knows who you are. “Aren’t you so-and-so’s boy? Well tell ya Momma we said hello.” Now that I think on it, maybe it wasn’t always such a good thing… Thelma Limehouse would always threaten to call our folks if one of us didn’t own up to trampling her prized tomato plants or bending the livestock fence when we hopped it to play baseball in the cow pasture.
I seem to have a notorious sort of revisionist history when it comes to recalling my youth. What I mean is that I often sugar-coat my memories because I like to think that all of my experiences were wholesome and nostalgic, but in reality, although I have a great deal of fond memories I often find myself reflecting more on the many episodes of sheer dysfunction that pepper my mental landscape than on anything remotely fond. Maybe it’s the glass half empty side of me, I don’t really know.
I guess you could say that I can fondly recall splitting a grilled cheese sandwich with my mother at the drug store lunch counter when I was maybe five years old. Cubed green Jell-O® with a spiral cone of redi-whip just seemed so exotic. Then again, whenever I think of that drug store I think of the absolutely traumatic three weeks of schizophrenic paranoia I went through thinking I was going to hell for shoplifting a Rapala® deep-diving mirror shad fishing lure. I took it out of its clear plastic packaging and shoved it in the front pocket of my Toughskins. If you’ve never seen a Rapala® deep diving mirror shad, it has not two, but three sets of razor sharp treble hooks for that guaranteed sure-catch.
I didn’t really want to steal that mirror shad. My brother and Ronnie San Pedro put me up to it. Although my brother was only two years older, he had some kind of authoritative unilateral rule over all forms of neighborhood activity. Ronnie was the oldest son of a seven kid Puerto Rican family that lived in the trailer park at the end of our street. Speaking of closets, I think the oldest San Pedro girl, Missy, ended up coming out of one a few years ago. It didn’t surprise anyone though. She was always a tom-boy sort, and now that I think about it, she was never the last one standing when the captains picked teams.
No, I couldn’t tell you why I went along with that fishing lure caper. All I know is that my brother and Ronnie were nowhere to be found when I left the drugstore. I think I cried all the way home. I cut through Mrs. Elliott’s yard as I peddled my banana-seat schwinn along the kudzu and wisteria lined path on the shortcut behind the library. I don’t think I even noticed that the mirror shad had lived up to that guarantee and made its first catch, entangling its barbs into my pants pocket and upper thigh.
My mother had us in church every time the door opened; twice on Sunday, and every Wednesday night for prayer service. We memorized bible verses from the New Testament in Sunday school and went to vacation bible school for two weeks every summer. We sang in the youth choir and practiced on Tuesday nights. Needless to say, we had our fill of fundamentalism by the time we were twelve. The thought of stealing, I mean blatantly breaking one of the Ten Commandments while God watched and took notes no less, was one of the worst offenses a ten year old boy could commit, second only to taking the Lords name in vain, which incidentally, earned you a mouthful of Ivory liquid soap and an ass cuttin’…but stealing? Stealing would send you to Hell… a pit of death where pain and suffering emanated from a lake of fire. I didn’t want to go to Hell.
My Father had attached a lean-to structure on the side of the barn to keep our bikes out of the weather, although I think it was more about keeping us kids out of the barn. As I sat in that bike shed staring out into the yard the sky began to darken. It started to rain. A slow but determined shower pelted the sandy soil creating a steamy haze as it cooled the scorched summer earth. It was clearly a sign. God was angry. People in the Lowcountry are very superstitious, hence the blue porch ceilings to repel stray spirits, and I knew that the angry sky was directed at me. My mother used to say that rainbows where Gods apologies for the often violent acts of Mother Nature. To this day I’m perplexed by the duality of the Creator, divine benevolence with a mean streak. My mind swirled as I struggled to make sense of what was happening. My tribulations where compounded as I was forced to cut the mirror shad from the pocket of my jeans, spelling an almost certain whipping from my Mother. Although I was hooked firmly, I was lucky in that the jeans had spared my thigh from the sure-catch barb, which would have made self extraction even more painful.
If I had learned anything from ten years of Southern Baptist confinement, it was that if I were to have any chance of circumventing the ground opening beneath me in a demonic fury, I had to repent and repent fast. I had to ask God for forgiveness, but as if asking the all-mighty himself for forgiveness where not enough, Southern Baptist added a strange draconian twist. Not only must you repent your sins to the Lord God above, but one must also publicly confess his sins and ask forgiveness from those who have fell victim to his evil ways. As if getting out of the drug store with stolen property were not hard enough, now I had to get back in and return it.
I rummaged through my brothers well-stocked old-timer tackle box looking for a suitable replacement for the clear plastic box I left behind in the aisle where the baseball cards where. I thought it would be too difficult to try and retrieve the original. On the second fold out row there was a brand new creek chub still in its acrylic box. I removed it and put the mirror shad in its place. Oddly enough, it stopped raining. Steam rose from the ground and the heat distorted the horizon. God had granted a stay of execution.
For three agonizing weeks that mirror shad haunted me like a tell-tale heart. I kept it under my bed, except for a brief period when I moved it to the tree fort. As each day passed I grew more and more remorseful, yet I could not bring myself to get within fifty yards of the drug store. I prayed several times a day, many times on bended-knee, asking God to spare my life. Please don’t send me to Hell God, Please. Finally, out of fear and desperation, I returned the mirror shad to its rightful owner, albeit somewhat mangled and not in its original package, I returned it nevertheless. I put it back on the shelf, and nonchalantly purchased a pack of Topps baseball cards with the Bazooka Joe gum inside, three Now-N-Laters and a Charms Blow pop for good measure.
It was a solid year before I went back to the drug store. If my mother was going to the Pharmacy, I would wait in the car. A few years ago my brother and I where helping our aging Father tear down the old barn and bike shed over the Thanksgiving holiday. Thirty years later and it still wreaked of pee from using its back side as a urinal when we were kids. We were both disgustingly amused. As we pulled the weathered board and batten siding from its timber frame, we marveled at how much smaller the structure was than we had remembered. My brother kept the piece of siding from overtop the barn door where my father had affixed a lucky horseshoe. It was a crisp autumn morning as we pushed the last timbers into a remarkably compact pile of debris. As the noon day sun warmed the nape of my neck I suddenly realized that I had not fully repented for stealing that mirror shad. I seized the opportunity to preserve my hereafter and publicly announced to my father that I stolen a Rapala® deep diving mirror shad lure from Eckerd’s drug store in 1977, but that Chris and Ronnie San Pedro made me do it.
As my family and I drove home that afternoon, I stopped by the old drug store. I told my wife that there was something I had to do. I went into the store and approached the young lady at the register. I gave her three dollars and told her that I had stolen a mirror shad lure from the store when I was a kid and I wanted to do the right thing and pay them back. She stared at me with the annoyed innocence of a typical teen. I picked up a pack of baseball cards, three Now-And-Laters and a Charms Blow Pop for good measure, checked out and left the three dollars in the have-a-penny-leave-a-penny tray. About three months later the old drug store closed. It was replaced by one of those hideous dollar store chains. My Grandmother on my mom’s side used to say that God worked in mysterious ways. To this day I’m convinced that He kept that old store open until I had fully repented for yielding to the siren temptation of the mirror shad lure.
