I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to pick up some of Jake’s fine barbecue and to catch up on the latest happenings around our part of the country. I parked beside the store and climbed out of my car. The good Reverend was sitting on one of the benches that bracket the front door to Charlie’s and enjoying the nice weather. Jake was with him as was Hermann Spencer and Fred Harbin along with a man I had never before seen. The stranger was an older man with thinning gray hair and a drawn look about his face. Jake stuck out his hand and said, “Good afternoon” and I asked how he was getting on. Jake made the usual comments. I said “Hello” to the Reverend Johnson and to Hermann and Fred and Fred introduced me to his Uncle Benny Singleton, the man with the thinning hair. Benny, it seems, is up with his family from the Gulf Coast where Katrina came ashore almost two weeks past. When I asked him how things are back there, he looked at me with a strained expression on his face and said he did not know much more about conditions at home than I did. About all he knew was what he was hearing on the news.

Benny is pretty certain his house is gone. From what he can find out, there’s not much left of his neighborhood. But the house is not his primary worry. Benny has insurance on his property and houses can be rebuilt. He is more concerned for his next door neighbor and best friend, Jack Southermeyer. When Benny pulled out on Sunday morning, Jack was insisting he was going to stay and ride the storm out. Jack just didn’t believe the storm was going to be all so bad. Benny could see Jack’s point of view in a way. People along the coast get all kinds of dangerous storm warnings and then the storm hits and it mostly comes to nothing. You get a bit of rain and some wind and maybe you get part of a roof missing, but the storm blows over and you walk outside into the morning sun and it’s never as bad as the officials were warning. After while, you get sick of running every time the weather people yell “Wolf!”, so you decide to just sit it out. The trouble is, Benny was saying, this time the wolf was actually at the door.

Benny said there are now sites on the web where you can log on and type in your name and address to let friends and relatives know you are all right, but that doesn’t help much if you don’t have electrical power. Benny plans to just keep his hopes up and pray Jack and the rest of his friends came through all right.

I was telling Jake to fix up a package of barbecue when Bob Havershold drove up with his wife, Gracie, and his daughter, Cheriee, in tow. Bob parked in front of the gas pumps and Jake bustled over to put the gas in. Bob looked at the price on the pump as he walked by and his face blanched. “Good Lord!” he said as he stuck his hand in my direction. “It’s getting so it costs more to drive my brat to dancing class than to pay for the lessons.”

Cheriee came bouncing up with a Harry Potter book under her arm and asked if I had read any of the Potter books to which I replied I had not. “I’m a little older than the target audience for those books,” I told her, but she insisted otherwise. “Anybody can read them,” she said. “My math teacher at school loves them.”

Gracie agreed her daughter was correct and said she had read several of them herself, just to keep check on what Cheriee was putting into her head. Gracie said the books are a light read to be sure, but the author, J. K. Rowling, has a pretty good lock on how a child’s mind works and she has constructed a truly frightening villain in the bad guy, Lord Voldemort. Voldemort makes Darth Vader look like a cardboard wimp. I told Gracie I might read a couple to see what I thought of them. I always enjoy reading good books. Cheriee said she would be happy to loan me her books if I would promise to take care of them. I agreed to her offer and asked, what with going back to school, with taking dancing lessons and reading Harry Potter, if she had been forced from lack of time to give up on the local community theatre productions.

“Of course not,” she said as though I had lost my mind for even considering such a ridiculous possibility. “I’m helping with props for the new show. It’s called “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” and it’s one of those serious, dramatic things the Corinth Theatre-Arts does every so often. I went to auditions and tried out, but I didn’t get a part. I really didn’t expect to since there was nothing for someone my age, but I wanted to try out anyway. The director called home and asked to speak to me person to person. I was out at dance class and she wouldn’t leave a message with Mom, said she wanted to talk to me. She was real nice about it, told me that a director has to think about the relationship of the characters on stage to each other when making decisions about choosing a cast. It’s a difficult job. She said we both knew when I came in to read for the part there was nothing really for me, and she suggested I try out for plays later in the season for which she thought I should have a really good chance of getting something. She was very nice. When I told her I still wanted to come down and help, she suggested I might like to try out with learning how to do lighting or securing props. I think it might be fun to help with props for this play. I’ll get to go around Corinth and meet a lot of people and look at what we might borrow. We have to take very good care of all the stuff we use, you know. People who loan out their things want them back in as good condition as they were when they let us take them. I may see about helping with the lighting for the next show.”

Bob pulled a face as he thought of Cheriee being driven all over Corinth to help look for props. With the price of gas the way it is, Cheriee’s involvement with the theatre is going to cost him in gas prices.

END