Sears Store at VV
[Read part one, part two, part three] The Friday before the first Monday of senior year, I came back from an evening at Up Your Alley – still close to the coldest beer I’ve ever had – to find that our house was burning down. The fireman saved a lot of our possessions. But with the fire starting in the garage and attic, it burned straight through my room next to the attic. What I was wearing was pretty much all I had left. By Monday, we were living in an apartment on Noel road near the mall. Our apartment was in the far back upstairs so we could see Alpha from the walkway.
We bought furniture for the apartment at Sears. Over the years, if it had to do with tools, yard equipment, or appliances, and furniture on occasion, we got them at Sears. When I stopped showing up at home to live “for just a little while” for the final, last time, I bought things at other places. But when Cyndy and I and the boys moved into this house eight years ago, we got appliances at Sears. Even after shopping around.
Ten years or so after we bought the furniture at Sears for the apartment, I worked at Sears as a “facilities engineer” in the morning before the 
store opened. Besides being a cleanup person – there wasn’t a carpet I didn’t clean on the second floor facing the mall – I had two other part-time jobs. One I don’t really remember. The other was writing a music/entertainment column for the North Richland Hills News, which is long gone now.
Fast forward to last year when our youngest son, J.D., got a job at Sears while he was home from school for Christmas. We hadn’t been to the mall Sears for some time. Buying stuff while J.D. was working there brought back a lot of old memories. Which is a good thing considering its future.
Peace be with you.
When a dog or dogs bark on TV – or there are any animal sounds at all – Buddy heads to the television. Our son, Conner, rescued Buddy from his former “owner” who had him chained on a short chain in the backyard. His food and water bowls had ants crawling all over them. Conner told them he was taking the puppy and brought him home.
and partly – again, still – because he can. He still gets this look on his face that says, “this house is freaking cool!” Having Misty to play with is a bonus. At times it seems like he remembers before Conner brought him home. If we do a certain thing – we haven’t quite figured out what it is – he’ll snap at us. Not to hurt us, more as an automatic response.
I just got home a little while ago from helping to pick the food up from Metrocrest Social Services with members of Christ United Methodist Church to deliver Thanksgiving food to the Sack Summer Hunger (SSH) families. With the weather having turned cool, it was quite a bit different than the 90+ degrees weather we worked in during the summer. All of the volunteers were in excellent holiday sharing spirit as everyone helped get the vehicles loaded.
I was letting the dogs, Buddy and Misty, out into the backyard. Buddy took off to make his rounds through the backyard. Misty, who is quite a bit older and heavier, rumbled out past the large trunk of the tree. When she was just past the tree, she stopped, looked up at the tree, and half-heartedly let out a quick bark. Then she turned her head back around as if to say “oh, the hell with it, it’s too hot,” and sauntered on to one of her favorite resting spots.
don’t you? Come to think about it, most of my best memories are those times when I’ve found myself in a new good place, feeling the same way. I hope I’ll always have those memories. I have relatives and friends who have already lost some of their memories.
Chasing After Wind 