Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
I was coming out of the oldest Secret's swim meet on Sunday, when my
cell phone rang. It was Steve, and he wanted to know if I'd heard the
news. What news? I asked. "Charlotte died!" he shouted.
What in the stir-fry hell?! My aunt Charlotte died? I think my Dad said
she was supposed to have dinner with them that very day. Wonder what
happened? And why was I getting this information through Steve?! It was
all so very confusing.
"No, no," he hollered, "Not your aunt Charlotte!
Charlotte, the owner of Charlotte's Grocery in Dunbar!"
Wha'? Charlotte's Grocery? That place was open when I was in grade
school, we're talking the early 1970s, and closed by the time I reached
Junior High, I think. What did he mean, had I heard the news? Did I miss
an episode of Obscure Retailers of the Distant Past on the
Discovery Channel, or something?
But, of course, Charlotte's was mighty important to us when we
were younglings. In fact, as best as I can tell, it existed exclusively
for kids. My recall capacity might be a tad skewed (anything's
possible), but I can't remember any adults ever being in that store. No,
it was all about candy, ice cream, and soda.
I'm pretty sure they stayed afloat almost exclusively because of
allowance money.
And I used the term soda up there, but that's not what it was called. It
was Coke, regardless of the flavor or brand. This led to people saying
things like, "Dr. Pepper is the only Coke I like." I had
cousins who lived in Ohio, and they called it "pop," which
made (and makes) my skin crawl. But I digress....
Charlotte's was your standard neighborhood store, a small cinderblock
building with glass doors in the front, planted in the middle of a
residential area. When you walked in, the counter was to the left and a
big chugging ice cream cooler was to the immediate right (I think). The
entire front-end of the place was piled high with candy and baseball
cards and all manner of greatness. If a kid went in there with a
quarter, they could spend upwards of thirty minutes deciding on what to
buy, because the selection was so massive. It was best to just limit
yourself to one dime at a time.
I remember buying comically oversized
blocks of bubble gum there, roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes. I
believe it was called Big Mouth, but I could be wrong about that. The
block was perforated down the middle, and came in regular bubble gum
flavor, grape, and green apple. That shit was a dentist's wet-dream. And
we treated it as sport to see if an entire pack could be crammed inside
our mouths at once. The whole kiddie population of Dunbar, it seemed,
was walking around with green juice dribbling off their lips, and
gasping for air.
I also bought a lot of those giant Pixie Sticks there, which were
nothing more than a length of rubber tubing filled with processed sugar.
It was diabetes by the yard! (Or, as the disease was called back then, sugar.)
And those round orange ice cream deals, called Push-Ups.... I remember
eating about a million of those babies. I liked when they started melting
a little, up against the cardboard. Yum, I wish I had one right now.
Charlotte also introduced us to gambling. She had a bubble gum machine
by the cash register that took nickels. Inside was the normal crapola,
but mixed-in were several striped balls. If a person was lucky enough to
get a striped ball,
they won one of the coveted "purple cows" on display high on a
shelf behind the counter. The cows were plastic figurines, or some such,
and I have no idea why everyone wanted one. But it was very exciting
indeed, gaming there at Charlotte's Casino.
My cousin Larry and I bought a metric shitload of trading cards in that
store as well, with pictures of motorcycles on them. But not just any
motorcycles, choppers! Between the two of us, we surely had the
complete set of that dubious series. It's too bad they didn't include
any actual bikers in the set, perhaps pictured with their boot on the
neck of a hippie or something. And maybe a glossary of the terms they
used, like "riding bitch."
And even more bizarre.... Do any of you remember a brief but baffling
trend where folks plastered stickers all over everything, that said
nothing but VOTE? It was probably around the 1972 presidential election,
and every kid had the word VOTE, in varying fonts and designs, stuck to
their notebooks. Needless to say, you could purchase the stickers at
Charlotte's, in packs of five. And what the hell, man? VOTE??
What are the other strange-as-crap non-sports trading cards? I seem to
remember an unpopular series that featured inventions of the future,
or something along those lines. And founding fathers trading cards!
"I'll trade you an Alexander Hamilton for your Aaron Burr...." I mean, seriously. Who did they think would actually buy
something like that?!
Ahem.
So there you go. I guess the news of Charlotte's passing wasn't so
obscure after all? In fact, the update you just read was almost twice as
long yesterday morning, and I decided not to use it. The thing was so
rambling and batshit, it felt like a Robert C. Byrd speech on the floor
of the Senate. And I can't have that. So, I spent this morning unwriting
-- for what it's worth.
The building that was once Charlotte's is still standing in Dunbar, but
it was turned into a "house" somewhere along the line. It
still looks exactly like a neighborhood store though, except there's a
wooden door on the front, and a porch light. Apparently some folks
believe a porch light possesses the power to transform any structure
into a home. And they are sadly mistaken.... I bet drunks still
occasionally stumble into the current owners' living room, and ask for a
pack of Pall Mall straights.
-- And that's all I can do today.... My brain is fried-up like a skillet
of pork. For the first time in my life, I'm having trouble sleeping at
night. What's that all about?! I don't know, but I don't much care for
it. In any case, we can all be thankful we've got Buck to bail us out of
this thing. Right here.
Thanks man, your timing is impeccable.
I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully refreshed and amongst the living again.
I've got my Red Hatter Christmas party tonight, and I really need to
tell you about the insane conversation(!) I had yesterday with the
Shuffler. Ho-ly shit.
--
I was coming out of the oldest Secret's swim meet on Sunday, when my
cell phone rang. It was Steve, and he wanted to know if I'd heard the
news. What news? I asked. "Charlotte died!" he shouted.