I Sit Alone

I Sit Alone

This morning as I sit alone having my morning’s share of coffee lightened by a couple of teaspoons of milk, a memory floored over me that I couldn’t help but be drawn into. In the poverty-stricken camps of the little community where I grew up, we weren’t as accustomed to soda pop or carbonated beverages as children seem to be today. Buying Coca-Cola in small glass bottles at the local community store was something that we did only when we found a dime or were given one by our dad. After securing the few coins in our pockets and filled with anticipation and a flutter of excitement, we prepared to make the journey across the valley to the store built right beside the two-lane road, a make-shift one-room catch-all. I and my brothers, David and Billy Joe, felt as though we held a fortune in our hands as we looked down at the clutch of coins we had been given. A few nickels and, of course, pennies held the possibility of buying one of those bottled drinks stored in the red cooler that had the bottle opener on the front. The cooler wasn’t an upright one as we know them today, but a chest type with a heavy lid. It took two of us to open the top of the cooler and retrieve one of those glass bottles. Having been given our instructions, we three boys who lived on the only hill in the area, walked out of the house, down the steps out of the yard, down the dirt road, and the long pasture leading to the bottom of the mountain near the railroad tracks. For us, the trek was arduous, but once having made it to the bottom of the hill, there was no turning back.

The trip alone took about thirty minutes from the door of our house to the door of the store that held almost anything the three of us might have dreamed of, especially the Coca-Cola glass bottles filled with our addiction. After having made our way across the valley, up the embankment to the road, then walking a half mile to the store, we all knew that we not only wanted the cold drink, but we deserved it. Entering the store, the owner nodded and watched us move around the newspaper stand that sit near the front entrance. He wasn’t one to carry on a conversation, his only interest was in the few coins that jingled in our pockets. Reaching the cooler, me and my brother David, raised the lid, staring at the bottles standing row after row prepared for anyone who might possess the resources to purchase one. “You get one and I’ll get one for me and Billy Joe,” my older brother said. I leaned in, lifted the one I wanted from its position alongside all the others, and stepped away to allow my brother to get the other two. Once finished, he let the lid drop with a resounding thump. We positioned our bottles under the bottle opener on the chest cooler and hinged it so that it would pry the top off.

We listened to the fizz of the carbonated beverage luring us to taste its excellence, feel the tingle in our throats, and try to remember to drink it slowly, to make it last. None of us knew how long it would be before we could get another. One dime and once upon a time, the three of us created a memory that I’ve stored away for over sixty years. No, there are no glass bottles that can be found much anymore that resemble those of my childhood that enticed me and my brothers to make the trek off the hill to the roadside store not far from our coal camp house at O’Toole, West Virginia.