Cotton's Store

Yesterday's thunder storm brought back an old memory.
The year was 1962. Small family own stores were still a staple in many areas.
Across the street from our home, was a one room store, about the size of today's family room. Picture two large windows filled with simple toys and books. Under the window were green wooden benches with the paint chipping off showing the previous coat of white underneath. The front door to the store was always open and there was a screen door that flopped shut after you walked into the building.
Two large ceiling fans made soft humming noises.
To the right, when you walked in the door was the jewelry counter. An arrangement of "less than $10 jewlery was arranged on faded velvet material.
As a child, I skipped that counter and walked straight to the 2nd counter...the penny candy. Here was an arrangement of the best candy around. Tootsie Rolls, 2 for 1 cents, suckers, candy cigerretts, sixlets, licore sticks, malt balls and of course miniture sugar daddies...but my favorite was the candy lipstick. Do you remember? It kind of tasted like wax, which reminds me of the little wax coke bottles filled with ???what was that stuff anyway? You bit off the end and gulped it down then chewed the way or made it into a small wax ball and threw it at your brother.
The the left, opposite the candy counter were two old fashioned refrigerator freezers. Not the upright glass kind you see in most gas stations, but the red rectangle models with the top that lifted up and the bottle opener on the side.
One contained sodas and the other ice cream on a stick...one of man's greatest inventions.
Our store was called "The Little Store" but everyone called it Cotton's after the people who owned it.
The Cottons were friendly people and knew all the customers by name.
When Mr. Cotton went on a buying trip and a storm came up, Mrs. Cotton would call my mom and she would dress us in our raincoats, get out the large umbrella and march us across the street. There we would sit inside the store on large wicker rocking chairs and listen to the thunder and rain hit the tin roof. Mrs. Cotton was afraid of storms but she didn't show it. She cheerfully let her little bird out of its cage and it would sit on top of her head. If I was really still, it might land on my shoulder but if I moved my head to look, it would fly back to its owner.

As a special treat, sometimes Mrs. Cotton would give us a soda. I always chose orange Nehi and my sister took grape. We would rock and talk and drink our soda...only down in the south it was always called "coke" no matter what flavor it was.
When I got older, I painted a picture of the little store. It was my first "real" painting and my mom rushed it across the street to show Mrs. Cotton. She loved it so much she wanted to keep it, so I signed the back and gave it to her.
I don't know what that first painting looked like quality wise, but I do remember her commenting that the side of the store was dark because it needed painting. So much for my attempts to show shadows. lol

When I go home to visit my parents, I look at the little store, now converted into the new owners family room. Mr. and Mrs. Cotton retired and moved down south shortly after I married. I heard they had passed away in the 1980s.

It is not the store I miss so much...as the time period. My kids can't run across the street into a neighborhood store and pop down a nickle coming home with five or six peices of candy depending on the kind. They won't have the opportunity to sit and listen to an afternoon thunderstorm and rain hitting a tin roof while hoping a bird would land on their shoulder. They won't even know the taste of an orange soda drank from a "glass" bottle, or the sound of the bottle top clinking down the metal container and landing on countless of other tops with a soft "plink". Or the smell...the sugary sweet, slighly metallic smell of a hundred bottle tops gathered in one place...or the opportunity to beg Mrs. Cotton for enough RC cola bottle tops to get into the movies for free. (tell you about that later)

Now when afternoon thunderstorms come up during the long hot summer, I turn off the lights (why did the electricity go off so much back then?) open the curtains, sit in my overstuffed rocker and watch the light show. I listen for the rain hitting the glass and I wish I had a pet canary flying around the room. In a way I do....but it flies around the corners of my mind.