I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week and found Mister Johnson sitting in his usual place by the pot belly stove with that old piece of pine wood he is always carving up. I asked him if he was ready for a brand new year and he looked up at me and grinned. He said the New Year was upon us and it matters not a bit if we are ready for it or not. I thought he was probably right about that. I asked Mister Johnson if Santa had been good to him. He said about as good as usual. Most of his family had showed up for the holidays. His brother, the Reverend Johnson, is a grandfather again. His daughter who lives over in Memphis has a brand new baby girl, the prettiest little baby God ever made. In any case, that’s what the Reverend claims. He thinks she will grow up to be a Miss America contestant from Tennessee.

Hermann Spencer who was sitting on a nail keg drinking on a cup of coffee wondered if there would still be a Miss America competition in twenty years. The show has fallen on hard times recently and Hermann doubts it will be around much longer. Mister Johnson shrugged and said whatever comes of the Miss America show, there will be some kind of beauty competition around and little Miss Angelina will certainly have a shot at winning.

Hermann asked how I had fared over the holidays. I came up with a pile of Christmas cards, I told him. Most of the cards came from people who have been reading my Charlie’s Reports. I even had a card from a lady in Chicago who said she sees the Charlie’s pieces in the newspaper web site each week. She grew up in Corinth and likes to read about the folks from back home. I had Sunday dinner last week with Jake and his family and Ellie, Jake’s grandchild down for the holidays from Jersey, entertained me the whole two hours I was there showing me the gifts she had from Santa. Her mother said there were so many toys they could not pack them all into the car for the trip home and would have to leave some of them for her to play with on the next visit to grandpa.

One of the nicest gifts I received was from a neighbor who lives around the loop from me. I met him last summer while I was walking over my woodlands looking to thin out the pulp wood to give the bigger trees more room to grow. He is building himself a house with his own two hands on the acre or so my grandfather sold off years ago from a corner of the woodland section. I passed maybe a half hour talking with him and he showed me around his new house in the process of construction. I was impressed with his work. Last week while I was getting cleaned up to make a trip into Corinth, I heard a knock at my door and, by the time I had put on clothes and reached the door, my neighbor was getting into his truck to leave. I did not recognize him right off in cold weather clothes until he reintroduced himself. Seems he had brought over a bag of oranges and candy for a Christmas gift. It was a nice little surprise and the oranges were good.

Hermann said his wife had given him a new hunting bow for Christmas. It was a fine thing, but Hermann has found he doesn’t have the enthusiasm for deer hunting he once had. For years Hermann has been out in the forest hunting for his trophy deer and never having any luck. Then last year he took out a nice buck on his way home from a trip to pick up some medicine for his wife. He had the trophy mounted and hung in his den. Now the inspiration for going out to hunt deer has fizzled out and Hermann is more content to work out in his tool shed on long winter evenings. He thinks it may be that he is getting on in years and the cold out in those drafty deer stands just seeps into his joints worse than when he was younger.

Now that he passes so much time working in his tool room, he has moved his trophy deer out to hang on the wall there. He began to decide it just did not look right in the den along with all the women’s stuff his wife has on the walls. He just likes it better out where he can look up at it while he is working. There is also less opportunity for his son, Dwayne, to come up with wise remarks when he comes home to visit. Dwayne has been one of those antihunting activists and Hermann and Dwayne have always been at loggerheads about going out into the woods in deer season.

Bob Havershold came into the store calling Happy New Year all around. He was wearing a new coat his wife bought him for Christmas. He said it certainly felt good. The old coat he had was constructed for those bitter Chicago winters. Around these parts, when he put it on he was too hot and he took it off and almost froze. Bob lived and worked in Chicago before he and his family moved down to our part of the country. This new coat is just right for this area. Mister Johnson told him the coat looked good on him. Hermann chimed in the old coat made him look like a Yankee. You could never tell when he was wearing it if he lived around these parts or if he was just down from Chicago for a visit.

Bob sat down by the stove and reminded us why Chicago had been settled in the first place. It seems a group of New Yorkers were sitting around a bar one day and they were talking about life in New York City. They agreed they liked the high crime rate in New York and they liked the dirt and they liked the high rent prices. What they did not like was New York was not cold enough for them, so they moved west and built Chicago. Hermann thought that was a funny story and he laughed until he almost fell off the keg he was sitting on. The rest of us could not believe he had never heard that joke. We began to laugh just watching Hermann enjoying the story. The thought came into my head that any year that starts off with good friends laughing around a pot belly stove has to have a lot of promise. All the folks at Charlie’s wish all of you a very happy and prosperous 2005.

END