Small Town Man, Part II

It’s a small town and my father, the archetypical old-school salesman, knows everyone’s name.

First we drop off the overheating Ford Explorer (my first time driving anything even remotely resembling and SUV — I feel all powerful and damn near engorged enough that I consider voting Republican in the next election . . . But fortunately the impulse passes…)

The mechanic’s name is Vern (“Vern, this is my son from Michigan…”) and he writes my dad’s cell phone number down on his forearm when we leave.

Next, we wander into a hardware store to pick up something he’s having repaired. On the way in he says hello to sixteen people, all of whom he knows by name and (I assume) they know him as well.

Walking through the store, which is a good balance of small town quaint and the “we have everything” megachain mentality, he says “Too bad you don’t have a place like this in Michigan.”

“Like fun we don’t. There’s one in my neighborhood.”

He points to a wall of ranch supplies — bridles, reins, stirrups, saddles. “You’ve got a place that sells all of that?”

“No . . . But there is a store downtown where you can get most of it. Although it’s typically done in black leather and there are silver studs on all of it. If you need a ball gag or a leather mask with a zipper over the mouth, they sell those too.”

He looks at me over his shoulder, keeps walking.

I follow him out back to the corrugated steel machine shop where a guy is working on the largest weed whacker I’ve ever seen. Tools and equipment everywhere. I’m on serious Alpha Male territory and doing my best not to betray my pale sissy underbelly.

My dad joshes with the machinist Dale (as in “Dale, this is my son from Michigan…”) and he leaves us alone for a minute to fetch something out of the back (although I doubt he’d use the word “fetch”). My dad looks at me and says “Dale knows everything. You ever meet a guy like him, marry him.”

“I think my life’s complicated enough right now, don’t you?”

When he comes back, Dale writes out a receipt on a torn strip of cardboard. “Give this to one of the girls up at the front. She’ll take care of it.”

Dad tells him about the auto mechanic’s notepad and says “Man, I’m living in the 18th century.”

“I don’t think they had weed whackers in the 18th century.”

“Sure they did.”

“Yeah, they called them ‘goats.'”

And then we’re out, headed back to the ranch to collect the kids for bowling.