I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to fill up with gas and to get my week’s supply of groceries. Jake came out as I was pulling up to the pumps and I told him to “fill ‘er up” as I normally do. Jake let out a big grin and begin to pour gas into my old car. “When you gonna give in and trade this piece of junk on a new car?” Jake demanded. “This thing must have close to two hundred thousand on it.” I told Jake I was working on two fifty. Jake’s eyes got big. “I wouldn’t have thought you could get an automobile to run that long,” he whistled. “You got yourself a pretty good car there. You best hang on to it so long as it keeps running.” I thought Jake was probably right. I’m not much on changing cars every few years in any case and this old car does me just fine no more than I use one. Jake finished filling the tank and I followed him inside out of the chill breeze.

Taterbug and Ellie came through the store like two savages on the warpath, they were in the front door and out the back before Jake could warn them to hold it in check if they were going to play inside. Jake just grinned and shook his head. “You wonder where kids get all that energy,” he said. Ellie is Jake’s grandchild who has been down from Jersey with her mother until New Year’s when they will be going back home. “I’m sure going to miss them,” Jake said. “After a month of having an uncontrolled ball of energy underfoot, it’s gonna be awful quiet with them gone.” I could almost detect a tear in Jake’s eye, but he turned away to check something on the shelf behind. I said I needed to gather up a few things and I grabbed one of the wire carts Jake keeps over in the corner of the store near the front door.

I found the Reverend Johnson over by the pot belly stove with Hermann Spencer and asked how the both of them were getting on. The Reverend said he was beginning to feel his age after a month putting up with Taterbug. Taterbug is the Reverend’s grandchild who came down from New York to visit over Thanksgiving and stayed on because he and Ellie got on so well. I said I expected the Reverend was looking for some peace and quiet when Taterbug goes home. “Don’t expect so,” the Reverend said. “Expect Taterbug will be staying on a while until things get straightened out at home.” I thought I might have ventured where it wasn’t any of my business to be asking questions, but the Reverend plowed right on.

It seems Taterbug’s mother had been getting friendly with one of the doctors at the New York Hospital where she works and the relationship had gone farther than she intended. Taterbug’s father and the Reverend’s son had of fact been putting in a lot of extra time with his job and the upshot was his wife began to feel as though she wasn’t appreciated like she thought she should have been. Human relationships are far too complicated to be reduced to a few simple sentences, but the upshot was Taterbug’s father came home from work one evening this past Thanksgiving at his proper time rather than working over as was planned and found Taterbug’s mother sitting in the living room talking with her doctor friend. There was nothing suspicious about the scene, just a man and a woman having a conversation in the living room and Taterbug’s father was not the suspicious sort. There was a brief and friendly conversation and the doctor explained he had to get back to the hospital as he was on call. He went his way and Taterbug’s father was preparing himself a snack when his wife decided it was time to fill him in on the developing relationship she was having with the doctor.

The details were not all that uncommon. The woman felt neglected. The man had failed to notice her needs, caught up in career advancement as he was. The Doctor was kind and considerate. It was pretty much the standard soap opera story played out thousands of times across the country with a different cast for each occurrence. The man and woman did not want to break off the marriage, there was the child to consider. It seems there are always innocent bystanders to consider, young persons who have no understanding why their safe and secure world is suddenly turned downside up. The woman needed some time to sort out her feelings. She needed time alone. The man, suddenly resentful at his betrayal, thought some time apart would be best. But what to do about the child?

Taterbug would stay with the Reverend for a few weeks until the father and mother came to a decision about the new direction for their lives. Now it seems Taterbug will be with us for an extended period. The Reverend said he was of a tendency to see his son as the wronged victim in the affair, but he has been a close observer of too many failed marriages to believe the failure is just on one side. As a rule, neither partner begins to seek friendship beyond a marriage if the other is giving the relationship all it requires. The Reverend knows his son has career advancement in his head and he can understand that he might have invested so much of his life in his work he had no time remaining for the mother of his child. The relationship between a man and a woman needs constant attention and renewal and failure can lead to feelings of betrayal and neglect. If one of the partners feels they are no longer so important in the other’s life, then is when they begin to look for someone to whom they can feel important.

The Reverend has hopes his son and his daughter-in-law can work over their problems. They are both good people who have just come to a rough place in the road. Taterbug’s mother calls to talk with the boy most every evening and, to this point, Taterbug doesn’t appear concerned that anything of moment is happening in his small world. He is suddenly possessed of more free space in which to run wild and he is of a mind to take full advantage. Time will come, and soon, he will have to know of the problems at home, but that day is not yet.

END