three incidents out at the Tractor supply

three incidents out at the Tractor supply

for Spin and Marty


fiction
edward w pritchard

Why did I look like my Mother instead of my Father?

 Both my sisters would be at the mall shopping with my Mother for pink clothes and I would be over at the Tractor supply looking for 40 to one oil mixture for the John Deere trimmer or a half size metal hand axe to whack out some bushes with this Sunday afternoon with my Dad. 

My Dad was so big, 2xx when we looked at the cowboy shirts on sale. I look like my Mother, 5'2 since age 13 and less than 100 pounds. I have her face too, pretty, I don't like that either, I don't like being feminine.

When I was eighteen I was out with Wendell Keener on a date I guess and he had been drinking beers and we rolled around on the stacked up bags of mulch and feed at the Tractor Supply where he worked. It was the middle of a Friday night after I refused his advances in the bed of his red Diesel Ford pick up. He might just as well as stuck things in the cracks between the bags for all the skills he had.

Four years later I first saw Jeannie over at the tractor supply too. She was one of these girls who is always lifting her shirt up to show off her stomach to anyone in the aisles behind her. It worked on me. Later we used to stop real early on Sunday mornings and buy a few things for her horses and then take a long long drive down some ancient Country road with an odd number like 157 East.  We would go way out in the Country and find a farm that took up both sides of a winding road with corn as high as the truck coming right up to the fence by the side of the road I was driving  on and when we finally found the farm house we would talk about how we would buy a place like this someday and sell corn and fruit out here on the edge of the road. I would always describe the little vending stall I would build in the garage at nights after work so we could sell jars of things and make a little extra money. The stall would have a seat for two and we would talk as we waited for our customers to stop to buy our stuff.

Jeannie never did leave her husband and when she died a few years ago I couldn't even go to the funeral. I have put on a lot of weight but I still have a pretty face which I don't much like, but now I ride alone on Sunday mornings on my motorcycle on long rides down in the Country on old roads like 157 West. I don't go to the tractor supply anymore.