The story goes that the Hill Brothers were a menace. They squatted an old store in front of my neighbor’s house, one that she owned and they were supposed to be renting.
They once threw a live cat (or maybe it was already dead .. not sure) in front of my dad’s truck speeding past their place. When he stopped one of the brothers told him that he’d be paying for that cat. My dad’s a gunsmith/ blacksmith/ general metallurgist with a bad habit of trading his nice guns down at the pawnshop. He’s some kinda ‘horse trader’ and can walk away from the pawnshop with 2,3,4,5 guns in exchange for his one. He likes fixer uppers. It is a rare moment that my father is not ‘locking and loading’ to use that tired axiom. He just picked the one on his truck seat up on placed it on the window sill with ‘ain’t payin for no cat’ (not a man of many words, that one).
One morning on the way to school, I noticed that the store had burned down the night before. I asked my dad what happened, and he told me he didn’t know. I’ve always imagined that the community resolved the issue together that night, but never learned what actually happened. Probably a very unsavory experience for all involved.
TLL/York
