This town owned us, that was the good and the bad of it. Was still cutting hair at the Snip 'n' Curl, though she had lost most of her eyesight around the same time she turned seventy,Īnd now she forgot to put the guard down on the clippers half the time, shearing a skunk stripe up the back of your head.Ĭarlton Eaton never failed, rain or shine, to open your mail before he delivered it. One empty finger of her white-gloved hand flapping as she sashayed down the dance floor with the debutantes. Old four-fingered Miss Monroe still taught cotillion, Housekeeper, Amma, who won the bake-off at the county fair every year. The rest of the week involved a whole lot of nothing and a little more pie, if you were lucky enough to live with someone like my family's Sundays were for church, Mondays for doing the marketing at the Stop & Shop, the only grocery store in town. You could be born or married or buried, and the Methodists kept right Woven into everything we did or, more often, didn't do. Around here, our traditions were so traditional it was hard to put a finger on them. Tomorrow my neighbors wouldīe rocking on their porches, heat and gossip and familiarity melting like ice cubes into their sweet tea, as they had for Sun would rise and set over the town of Gatlin without bothering to kick up so much as a breeze. A place where nothing ever happened and nothing would ever change. I used to think our town, buried in the South Carolina backwoods, stuck in the muddy bottom of the Santee River valley, was
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