It was an extremely close vote.
In the end, I kid you not, it was a tie. Frankly given the low voter turnout,
more reminiscent of a baseball score than the democratic process,
I take the result to be completely indicative of nothing other than not
many of you are either reading or caring about what I write. Therefore,
as its America, I guess I’m free to do what I want, so for at least this
month, I’ll continue on.
Chapter II.
George Nelson, age 43, of 14 Merryweather
Way, East Cumberland died at 2:06 PM March 3rd as a result of injuries
sustained following a collision with a municipal sanitation vehicle.
The truck was being driven by Mr. Clark Estins, a 24 year employee of
the borough of Summitville. Mr. Estins was treated for minor abrasions
at Cityside Hospital and released. The accident occurred at the intersection
of Highway 901 and Great Falls Road. Witnesses reported that
Mr. Nelson appeared to be traveling at a high rate of speed and failed
to yield to a red light. Mr. Nelson, who is survived by his wife
Christine and two children, Erin age 12 and Allan age 9, suffered severe
head trauma and was pronounced dead on scene by responding paramedics.
Summitville police are investigating the cause of the incident. No
charges have been filed.
Walt was nursing his coffee, eyeing Iggy’s
latest addition to the waitressing corps, when his beeper went off.
Startled from his bleached blonde daydream, he squirmed on the stool until
he managed to free the annoyance from the rear pocket of his overalls.
He snapped the switch off. For guys like Walt, lunch hour was just
that, a full hour and not a second less. This was more than true today.
The morning had brought a succession of annoying and dirty jobs.
Whatever, whoever it was, was just going to have to wait another nine and
half minutes.
Iggy’s. It had been serving three
squares a day for as long as anyone within 20 miles could remember.
Like everything else in Summitville, it has seen its fair share of good
and bad times. These days the routine was predictable. Open
at 5, close at 9. Walt always made it a point to not to arrive before
the usual lunch crowd had cleared out. It wound him too tight.
From his stool, the sounds and images bouncing off the deco stainless and
class casing behind the counter forced him into other people’s problems.
He didn’t care that interest rates were rising, whether or not the high
school soccer team would make the state finals, let alone that Mrs. Eckshine
had implant surgery or that Doctor Roberts had run off with a male nurse.
He much preferred to be left alone to dream his own dreams or make small
talk with the waitresses, who found him mildly entertaining when things
were a little slow.
When Walt first claimed the second stool
from the wall at the far end of the curving lunch counter, Iggy’s was the
single most popular spot in the entire county. In those days the
diner was open round the clock, every day of the year except Christmas
and New Years. Back in the early sixties, after the bars closed,
the diner did its best business. It served up the perfect venue for
continuing all manner of mayhem well into the morning hours. Aided
by significant quantities of caffeine and the occasional toke or two that
was always available out back by the dumpster, the half-drunk patrons,
ravenous for eggs, hash browns and meat products of any kind, would feast
all night on their youth. Occasionally things would get out of hand,
but the regulars tried as hard as they might to make sure that on any given
night there was some peace and lots of opportunities for love.
Anyone who frequented the establishment
at that time was well aware of Ignascious ‘Iggy’ Solomon. He bore
a striking resemblance to Mr. Clean. Often he would pause near the
front door by the cash register to chat with the patrons. Arms folded,
not a hair on his head, wearing a plain white tee shirt and apron, a customer
in a rush to leave would find themselves twenty minutes late for whatever
they had to do next, if he had decided he was curious about them. He was
undeniably happy in these moments, ever intent on filling his very large
soul with whatever interesting bits he might jangle from their pockets.
Though Iggy had been raised in the depression
largely through foster care, he had come through the experience miraculously
unscathed. After an undistinguished but honorable service in the
Army, he managed to scrape together enough money to open the diner. By
then he had developed into a man that everyone in town loved, but no one
wanted to live, let alone sleep, with. His wife and their 6 month
old daughter left him after only a year of marriage. It troubled him, but
having been bounced from home to home as a child, the understanding that
relationships were temporal had been so fully impressed upon him that he
suffered little. The restaurant filled the void by serving him a
small space within which everyone was a life long friend. Yet neither he,
nor anyone else who frequented the place would have ever dared to depend
too heavily on this friendship once they wandered beyond the rectangle
scribed by its paneled steel walls.
When throat cancer took Iggy away in the
fall of 1977, his daughter returned to Summitville to run the place. She
managed to make it work for half a dozen years or so, but eventually she
grew bored and wanted out. With the old man gone the atmosphere had
had the flavor sucked out of it and the routine had ceased to be comforting,
rather now it was drudgery, at least for her. Eventually she decided
to sell to some folks who had relocated from San Diego. The new owners
rapidly realized that the best way to protect their investment was to keep
a low profile and continue serving up generous portions of meatloaf,
turkey platters and chili dogs. Over time, some of the diner’s persona
was reclaimed, but times being what they were, the late night socializing
had moved into the discos and after hours clubs on the other side of town,
so the antics of the past remained there.
As far as Walt was concerned, along with
anyone else whose destiny was to be born, raised, educated, married, divorced
and laid to rest in Summitville, Iggy’s belonged to him. He had lived
two doors down, three floors up over Herrick’s Hardware for the past nine
years. In that time, he’d only missed a handful of meals next door, most
of them when he had been laid up with the flu. The apartment was
small, but it suited his personality. The building, its brick façade,
now a deep rusty brown, speckled with drops of white, the result of
a cheap paint job performed by college students several spring breaks ago,
had some antique charm. But the interior was another matter.
The moldings might have been carved by long dead local artisans, but the
cracking plaster and tarnished fixtures were of more humble origin.
The yellowed ceilings were low at the hip, owing to a sloping roof and
a false front. Had he ever had occasion to entertain more than a
guest or two, they would certainly have been less than comfortable.
After work, particularly in the heat of
summer, he’d slide the old windows wide, lean on the sill, Budweiser in
hand, content to watch the town below slowly fall into the tranquility
of dusk. With the odd passing car, occasionally he’d recognize
a fender or a tail lamp assembly that had made its way back from J.J’s
into the land of the living. He’d take a deep swallow of beer, wipe his
mouth and try not to pay too much attention. Walt wasn’t under the yard’s
influence in quite the same way as the others at Waldren’s Salvage. Once
upon a time, he had been a client of the scrap yard, but even in this,
the isthmus he inhabited had been intentionally left uncomplicated. He
had either failed or refused to recognize the deeper truth about the forces
that were working continuously to shape the ground he was walking upon.
The scrap knew this, it was exactly what it enjoyed so much about him.
For his part, he could hardly have failed to notice the nervous twitch
produced each time he unexpectedly encountered a recycled hubcap or hood
ornament, but both he and the yard were content to keep the strange sensation
from his conscious mind.
His coffee now cold, Walt rose from the
stool, folded a few bills and slid them half under the empty lunch plate.
Smiling in the direction of the new temptress, who utterly failed to notice,
he walked out of Iggy’s and back to his other old friend, the Dodge wrecker.
Once in the cab, the key in the ignition waited for the glow plugs to do
their job so the old girl and Walt could get back to work. He remembered
the pager and checked the message that had arrived just a few minutes before.
“Ah shit”, he muttered as the diesel rattled back to life. He slammed
it into first, spun the steering wheel for all he was worth and turned
to head off to the northeast side.
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