The General Store
South Carolina 2011
When I was a girl, I’d walk a mile out of my way home from school to go to the country store where I would buy a candy bar. Sometimes, after I got my candy, I might go to my friend’s house, where her mother would stop ironing or washing or canning to find out about our day. My friend’s family had little money. Who did in those days? I remember her mother saying that they didn’t need to buy a television because their neighbors had one. Even at ten years old, that struck me as odd.
People without a television used to hurry with dinner and rush to their neighbor’s to watch “I Love Lucy” or whatever came on the screen. Our family didn’t have much money either but we had a television and we had neighbors who visited us every evening to watch it with us. If my parents got tired of them, they never said anything in my presence.