Of course, Eufaula is a good thirty five miles from my house and the Big Store is eight miles past that but a summer evening is a good time for a drive.  Ponder and I always liked to drive with the windows down catching the smells from whatever grew beside the highway.  That evening, the smell was mostly honeysuckle.  I caught a stink of paper mill once or twice and a big whiff of skunk as I passed a motel, but mostly it was honeysuckle.   It was honeysuckle when I turned toward onto the short road that ends in the Big Store parking lot. Now, no one told me about that road.  It was dirt and chert rock for half a mile before it dropped so steep, the chert rolled off the road.  It drop was full of gullies from rainstorms and I had to shift down and ride the brakes to get to the bottom.  I hated to think about how I’d get up on the way back.  Once it bottomed out, the road just fanned out into a parking lot without any lights or pavement.  I didn’t guess there would be so many cars!   It looked like a … Continue reading The Big Store (Part 3)