Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

zoe/ivy is here today, because it’s Thursday and, as we all know, Thursday is the day for the Six Sentence Story bloghop. Tape my word for it, it is.  Each week we’re given a ‘word prompt’ and challenged to write a story in six sentences. Pretty simple, isn’t it?  No, not it’s not. But it’s satisfying and aggravating and frustrating and, ultimately …quite gratifying.

The two farm roads that converged to create the ‘four corners’, (earning that spot along the ridge running through the open farmland of rural CT, the title of ‘Town’),  were covered in snow by Halloween, promising a winter that might earn the honor of being a reference-winter, forever available when, in the heat of Summer, people seek relief from one weather extreme by discussing another.

“Oh, aye-yah!…it’s a cold one, not as cold as ’67, a course,  now that was a cold winter‘,  the old men, gnome-like commentators on life, weather and the state of hope for the citizens of the Voluntown,  gathered to the warmth of the wood stove, in the back center of McCormack’s, the Town’s grocery/hardware/clothing/farm supply and drugstore.
‘The Apothecary‘, Miss Eldridge would call it, ever alert to bestow the benefits of her calling, (one might call her the School Marm, if not overly concerned with the maternal inference in the title), upon whoever was in earshot, the use of the old-fashioned word gave her pleasure, as if, rather than inviting mockery of her age and social status, it enhanced it, much like a visit to a Victoria’s Secret store might create a self-perceived desirability, her perfect enunciation transforming the rustic store/supply house (now an Apothecary), magically transformed into a sophisticated and refined urbane nightspot, seething with men and women stalking their evening dreams.

I grew up in the 1960s and I survived the ’70s. Even with that level of existential survival-training,  I’m seriously at risk of losing my grasp on the here and now, mostly because the ‘here’ seems to be an old-fashioned country store, and the ‘now’, well, it sure isn’t where I left off last night. The sudden feeling of discontinuity triggers my survival response, I make no sudden moves, do not make eye contact with anyone, (the ‘anyone’ seem to be two old men sitting by a black pot-bellied stove, a woman dressed all in grey who has a look on her face that seems to be privately excited), I can feel a door being opened behind me, more by the increased illumination on the back of the store than by actual sound, from behind me, like I needed an additional surprise, came a man’s voice, overly-dressed in friendly concern,

‘I assure you, Miss Eldridge, he is just not your tape“.