I am not one to pine for the good old days. Maybe because I remember things about those days that were not so good. But I have to admit I like it sometimes when things don’t change. In a world of constant change, to have something remain the same is reassuring somehow.
On Friday, I was out driving and wound up in my old home village of Bornholm, about 20 miles northwest of Stratford. I grew up on a farm a mile and a half east of the village, the main feature of which was Wietersen’s Country Store, a great old general store that, come 2020, will have been in the Wietersen family for 75 years. A grandson of the original owners now operates the place as did his father before him.
When I was a kid, it was a big day when my Dad asked me to go with him to Bornholm and to the store. None of my six brothers and sisters along. Just me. I might have been five. To be chosen to spend time with my hero and maybe score a pop in the process, was pretty exciting.
In the store, my Dad would get into a long conversation with Les Wietersen, one that seemed to go on forever. As I was a little too snoopy, wandering around the place, I was ordered by Dad to sit in an old pressed back wooden chair in the middle of an aisle.
I haven’t been in the store in many years but on Friday, I walked in through the old familiar doors. I recognized the interior immediately, with its best feature, a long wooden counter, worn from customers leaning on it and talking over the news of the day. I walked to the aisle where I had regularly sat as a boy, and there it was – the pressed back chair I always sat in, in exactly the same spot. I asked if it was possible that that was a different chair and was told that it was the same one, it had always been there. I sat in it many times more than 60 years ago.
A lot of water under the bridge since then. It was almost an eerie feeling standing there in my senior years now, looking at a chair I used to sit in when I was just a pup.
I am grateful for that touchstone and for people who aren’t in a hurry to be the new broom that sweeps clean. Memories flooded back to me. All good ones. Wherever they are, I hope Dad (also Jim) and Les are sorting out the issues of the day, as they always did.
I didn’t sit in the chair on my recent visit but someday soon I will again.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
