The antique store was on the side of Highway 231. It looked like it had been an old filling station once.
The sign said Open. So I walked inside.
I’m a sucker for antiques. I don’t just like antiques themselves. I like the spaces where antiques have parties.
“How you today?” came the voice of the woman behind the counter. Her hair was silver. Piled atop her head. “Can’t seem to get warm in this weather. Tell you what.”
There were old heaters going. Space heaters. The kind your granny used. Heaters that leave third-degree burns on the calves of 5-year-old boys. The good kind.
I browsed their selection. I bought a book by Erma Bombeck. An old church chair.
When I went to pay, I was short on cash. “You take credit cards?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We got to call it in.”
Next, the woman brought out an old knuckle-buster credit card machine. The old machines, the ones that create an impression of your card on carbon paper. It is also an antique.
This was too good to be true.
“Bet
you haven’t seen one of these in a while,” she said.
Her name was Susan. She has owned Jinright’s Hillside Antiques & Collectibles for as long as I’ve been alive. She bought the store with her husband, Benny, right after they got married.
They didn’t have two dimes to rub together. People said the store was an unwise investment.
“But we both liked antiques, so we figured, why not?”
They somehow managed to keep the lights on. Many times they kept the place running with money out of their own pockets.
“You have to have other jobs if you’re an antique store owner, otherwise you’ll starve.”
Benny was in law enforcement. Susan taught school. She was a high-school English teacher once. Then she got her master’s from U of A, and taught gifted kids.
“It’s flat hard…