11/2/2019
Often in the last few months, I have wondered why “Unchained Melody” has not been the SIMH. It’s long been one of my top 5 favorite popular songs of all time, yet it never had been first on my mind when I awoke. Today, it was. The Righteous Brothers, first together in a group called the Paramours, got their name from black Marines who visited the club where they were singing regularly and began to say about their music, “that was righteous, brothers!” and it soon became their greeting (as in, “Hey, Righteous Brothers!”), so began the very successful career of two men who knew when and how to grab the “brass ring.”(1965 till one of them died. It is revived with a new member, but I don’t know their music.)
Somehow, sometimes the month begins to unfold rapidly as does this one. We’re in the planning and unfolding of a timeline for Sarah’s new Blue Jug location and we need to hustle! If humanly possible, we need to be in the new store by Christmas. Looking at the building and the priority list today might make this seem unlikely. But, duty calls. The owner has the front (windows and doors) new framework in and the glass, but not yet the doors. Yesterday, it looked like parking lot work was being done, also. And so it goes.
On the other new store front, we’ve got two more near lease signing with their respective landlords, so two more stores open before the end of the year is still a possibility, though tempus fugit!
The next two months of Bible Classes will be steadily the same, even through holiday week. Christmas day/New Year’s day is Wednesday, so unless there is a vacation coming up I don’t know about, the classes will not be interrupted. First and third Sundays in Alexandria, AL and the 4pm afternoon class at our house will not get cancelled on either Sunday. Hmm, most years that sort of normalcy doesn’t occur in November and December.
The other day I wrote a short paragraph on a FaceBook page called “Growing up in Trafalgar,” a page for memories and comments about the little town where I grew up. It’s a fun page; comments from a few older than me, some contemporary to me, even more from those in the next 1/2 generation after me. What I wrote was a little bit braggingly, in that I knew so many townspeople, it seemed to me I knew them all. This turned into reading several comments, finding a friend was related to some other friends which I hadn’t known before, things like that. In the process of the string our conversation turned to the pool hall and the people who spent time there. There were several older men who came, not to play pool, but to play Euchre, and sometimes Rum (or Ginrummy.) One such was a slightly disabled farmer who was called HughDad Brock. After the card games would get interrupted, HughDad would flop down beside the best pool table in the house and watch the games.
HughDad would watch with great interest and if a player shot poorly or couldn’t figure how to take a shot, HughDad would yell out, “Perfect bank!”—generally irritating the player. One day, a regular player in a game which probably had an unknown side bet was his target: “Perfect Bank, “ he cried out. The player turned to HughDad and said, “If you’re so $#@@#$ smart, why don’t you show me how!?” HughDad looked at the players opponent and asked, “Is that all right with you if I win this game for him?” The opponent laughed and said, “sure thing, old man.”
HughDad, with a great deal of effort, got up, took the cue stick from the player, leaned on the rail to take his shot, called a two bank shot and made it. Then walked to the end of the table, called another two bank shot, took it and made it. He then said, “I’ll kick the 8 ball in off the 3rd rail,” took the shot and made it. MR. BROCK handed the cue back to the player and sat back down, never changing his expression. Absolutely the quietest I had ever heard that pool hall.
To me, he was Mr. Brock from then on. Oh, by the way: this was just about the time school started for my Senior year. Mr. Brock couldn’t sit through a basketball game on account of his bad hip. But, the first time I would see him after the game, he would ask me how I played. He already knew the outcome, he wanted to know how I played. A fella just can’t easily forget a man like that.
[One of at least 439 stories from my 18 years in Trafalgar]
Thanks for reading, the Elder
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