Yes, We Have One Happy Banana

Today is a perfect day for reading.

            The town of Madisonville itself seemed pretty old. It was a straight shot from Greenwood Circle down Warren Street (which ran east and west through it) into town proper. The landmarks along the way were nearly as interesting as town. The first was a house (largely abandoned but still standing, and for sale) across from the primary (or grammar) school. It wasn’t the house that was so interesting (though at times no one lived there for years at a stretch), but an underground garage right on the edge of Old Athens Road was the fascination. The doors were always locked and that just made it more mysterious and allowed for all manner of speculation.

            Just feet away, right beside the railroad tracks, was a wood treating operation. The fellow who worked there looked like a clean shaven, shorter version of Abe Lincoln. He controlled a boiler that occasionally let off enough steam to fog the control room and even an area outside near a water spigot from which I had taken many a drink on my way home after the movies. Though the building is gone, the site is now the location of the Habitat for Humanity store.

            I always considered the railroad tracks as the town boundary. Immediately past them and beside a sidewalk inclining upward was the Stickley property and mansion. The guy who owned it had also owned one of the drugstores in town. He died not long after selling the drugstore, and the grounds of the soon emptied house became largely wild, so a strand of trees lined the sidewalk and obscured sight of the mansion, which looked pretty spooky on a late grey afternoon or at night. In the fall, hedge apples, many smashed or rotting, covered the walk and southern side of the road there.

            Across from the mansion, where the street curved slightly right as it inclined toward town, was another country type store. One of the owner’s sons was a friend of mine (also a drummer), and an older son was a friend of my youngest aunt. Though truly a country store, it was the first place in town with an Icee machine. Like some of the stores farther out of town, a single gasoline pump was situated close to the outer wall between the two doors of the business (of which one section served as storage, but for some reason the owner switched out toward the end of the 60’s). The store also played briefly into my musical history a few years later.