We were driving back from the supermarket. “Here’s a totally random memory,” I said. “Fairly pointless, too.”
“Good,” said Carol. “I like pointless memories.”
“So when we were little, Jean and I — and maybe we were old enough that Abby was in the car seat — Mom used to take us food shopping at least once a week at Stop and Shop in Concord,” I said. Carol and I lived together in Concord for seven years, so she knew which supermarket I meant; Jean is my older sister, and Abby is my younger sister. “We’d drive down Liberty Street so Mom could avoid driving through Concord center, which meant we went right by the visitor’s center for Minuteman National Park….”
“OK,” said Carol, mentally picturing the route my mother had once driven, all those years ago. “I know what you mean.”
“So for some reason,” I continued, “when we got to the parking lot at the visitor’s center, Jean and I would start chanting, ‘Go through the park, go through the park,’ and Mom would drive us through the parking lot at the national park visitor’s center. I have no idea why we always wanted to go through the park, it was just one of those things that got started and then we always did it.”
“Oh, that’s sweet!” said Carol. “You probably wanted to go through and see all the cars there.”
“Yeah, I think at one point I was really into finding out-of-state license plates,” I said. “That’s probably what started it.”
“That’s really sweet,” she said again. “Those were more innocent times.”
“Actually,” I said, “I don’t think they were more innocent. When we got to the supermarket, we used to see this young woman who was anorexic. She’d always be there with her parents. Later, we found out the reason she was anorexic was that her parents were beating her.”
“How’d you find that out?” said Carol.
“When I was housemates with D—-,” I said, “D—-‘s sister was just married, and she and her husband rented a little house from them. The parents and the anorexic daughter lived in the big house, and D—-‘s sister rented what used to be the servants’ house. D—-‘s sister and her husband would hear the anorexic woman screaming when her parents beat her. She must have been thirty-five years old by then.” I paused, thinking about D—-‘s sister. “Not a great way to begin your married life,” I coninuted, Carol following my logical leap. “They moved out as quickly as they could. Anyway, I don’t think those times were more innocent.”
That was the end of those random memories. When Carol couldn’t remember if she had picked up the business card of the woman whom we had met earlier in the evening while sitting at the bar of our neighborhood watering hole, our conversation moved on to other things.
Hi Dan – yes, I remember the license plate hunts. We were both fanatics about collecting the states. I think that was the beginning of the end of the “old” Concord, really. When the National Park came in, so did all the tourists, the cutesy shops for the tourists, and downtown changed from a real town to a … well … theme park. As for the anorexic young woman…I think it was even worse than “beating” her — if I remember right, there was sexual abuse involved. My memories of Stop and Shop involve Mom’s invocation of manners as we walked across the parking lot. She’d point out things not to do by indicating those who did: you didn’t chew gum (see the gum chewer?), you didn’t litter, swear, or drag your feet if you had manners. I still can’t chew gum happily, i don’t litter, and I do pick up my feet. Swearing? Um, sorry Mom…
The tradition continued long after you two went off to college — Mom and I would still drive through the parking lot, both to add another ticker on their car counter, and also to look at the license plates. It was a sad day for me when they reversed the entrance and exit for the parking lot, because we couldn’t do the run-through on the way home anymore, and we never remembered to do it on the way TO the supermarket. As for Concord-as-theme park, it’s not THAT bad. Yes, it’s a tourist town, but the fact that it’s a year-round residential town does keep the theme park aspect down a bit. Nantucket, on the other hand, is a total theme park, in my view.
Jean — I’d forgotten about the sexual abuse part…. as for the theme park, I suspect the Burlington Mall put the final nail in the coffin of Concord’s downtown business district.
Abs — I’d forgotten about the car counter (seems to me that sometimes we’d make Mom back up and go over it twice so they’d think they had more cars — or maybe that’s just what I wanted us to do).