Country Place


 
 
 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 About the Author
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 1
 I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED THAT, WHEN a man writes a record of a series of events, he should begin by giving certain information about himself: his age, where he was born, whether he be short or tall or fat or thin. This information offers a clue as to how much of what a man writes is to be accepted as truth, and how much should be discarded as being the result of personal bias. For fat men do not write the same kind of books that thin men write; the point of view of tall men is unlike that of short men.
 Therefore, I hasten to tell you that I am a bachelor; and a medium kind of man—medium tall, medium fat, medium old (I am sixty-five), and medium bald. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. I think I have what might be called a medium temperament.
 It is only fitting and proper that I should openly admit to having a prejudice against women—perhaps I should say a prejudice against the female of any species, human or animal; and yet, like most of the people who admit to being prejudiced, I am not consistent, for I own a female cat, named Banana. Though I am devoted to her, I am well aware that she is much closer to the primitive than a male cat.
 For example, the sight of the town taxi-driver, who is called The Weasel, arouses a kind of fury in her. Her tail swells to twice its normal size and she swats at him with her claws unsheathed. It is true that he dislikes cats, but that does not justify her snarling at him whenever he comes into the store to make a purchase. But like most females she makes no effort to control her emotions.
 I see that I have used the words “town” and “store” without explaining either the one or the other. I am a druggist and the store is, of course, a drugstore.
 In a city a drugstore is all wiggling neon lights and cosmetic bars and aluminum cooking ware—a place full of the hot, greasy smell of hamburgers being cooked in rancid fat.
 My drugstore is not like that. It belonged to my father and to my grandfather before him. They installed the old-fashioned ice-cream parlor which remains much as it was in their day. It is separated from the rest of the store by an arched opening. In this separate section there is a fountain. But no stools upholstered in imitation leather, no coffee-makers, no electric grills. There are instead six small, round tables whose slender legs are made of wrought iron, and there are chairs which match the tables.
 I make my own fountain sirups: lemon and cherry and orange and all the other flavors. When the chocolate sirup is cooking in a big open pan on the kerosene stove in the backroom, it fills the store with a rich, mouth-watering smell. One rarely finds that smell in drugstores these days—or any of the other smells so typical of this store. For I sell green ginger root and horehound candy and those round hard peppermints called Canadian mints.
 But I dispense penicillin and the sulfa drugs, too. I tell you this lest you think of my store as a place untouched by time. On the other hand, I sell kidney plasters for backaches, and an amazing quantity of powdered sulfur, for there are many people in the town who blow sulfur down their children’s throats as a remedy for sore throat—and a strangling kind of remedy it is, too.
 The town of which I speak is Lennox, Connecticut—a quiet place, a country place, which sits at the mouth of the Connecticut River, at the exact spot where the river empties itself into Long Island Sound. Thus, Lennox is almost surrounded by water, and it is filled with the salt smell of the sea and with the yammering sound of the gulls. At certain seasons of the year, the sky over the town is enlivened by the comings and goings of water birds. For the coves and inlets and creeks that edge the town offer a perfect resting-place for migrant birds.
 We have a town green, a large open space in the center of the town, where cows and sheep once grazed. My drugstore faces the green. The Congregational Church is directly across the way from it, on the other side of the green.
 The town of Lennox is easy to recognize because of the Gramby House. If you ever take Route 1 to Boston, you will see a great brick house, facing the Post Road, about eighteen miles outside of New London. Motorists refer to it as the “pink house” because the brick appears to be a delicate pink when the sun shines on it. Whenever this house is spoken of, or written about, in the town, it is called the Gramby House, never the Grambys’ house. I do not know why. Perhaps because it is the largest house in Lennox; or because it is the only brick house; or possibly because its occupants, Mrs. Gramby and her son, Mearns, were the town’s wealthiest citizens. Perhaps for a combination of all three reasons. In any event, the presence of its imposing façade distinguishes this town from all the other villages that are strung along the Boston Post Road.
 But like the other small New England towns we have a great increase in population during the summer months. Many refugees from cities spend their vacations here. These summer people leave about the