Criminal Behavior

It's Saturday afternoon, a little more than a week before my 49th birthday. I've been at Mom's since last night, and today I'm hanging out a little in Marshall, North Carolina, at Zuma Coffee, having a cup and eating quiche before going up on the bypass to buy Mom's groceries and head back to Walnut. In the picture, Zuma is up the street on the right, a little beyond where the second car on the right is parked and right across the street from the courthouse dome that is visible on the left. If you can make out the traffic light hanging over the stree, the coffeehouse is on the right at that corner. Take a right at the light, and you go across the bridge over the French Broad River. Although the bridge is being rennovated or redone, when I was in high school, the bridge had an unusual feature--an intersection. You could turn right and go down a short spur bridge onto the island where Marshall High School was. I went there my freshman year before the consolidated high school was completed.

*******

As I sit here and think of Marshall and the old times, I'm reminded of my brief life of crime as a teenager. It was mere feet from where I'm sitting right now that I leaned over the record bins at Home Electric--the business that used to be in this space--and drew a Grand Funk Railroad album up under my sweater and walked out. Although I know I'm forgiven for that event more than 30 years ago, I still feel the guilt that burned my face to ash before I even got a block away. But I wasn't caught, and I didn't return the album. Criminal!

*******

Emboldened by this, a few days later I swiped some candy from a store up on the bypass. This time, however, I was seen, and an announcement was made over the loudspeaker. I ditched my "take" and bolted from the store, my heart pounding in my chest, my neck, my head. Fortunately the new bypass stores were harbingers of this future we now live in and run by strangers who didn't know the county and its people. Had I been caught with the album, Mr. Baker, well known to me and my parents, would have had me by the scruff of the neck while he called my folks. Heck, he might even have whipped me himself, even though he was a gentle man. (My brother has rented a garage apartment from the Bakers for 20 years or so, and Mr. Baker just died a few weeks ago.) Anyway, that ugly rush of fear ended my criminal career after two jobs--one a success, one a failure.

*******

So there you have it--what's running through my mind as I sit here with a cold cup of coffee.