I MISS DOWNTOWN

By m.s.wardrip

I miss downtown and there is no downtown.

Downtown is just a figment of my imagination.

So, what is downtown?

It’s different to every one,

One girl’s downtown might be travelling, spending money shopping and dining out,

Another man’s downtown might be making money and living frugally right there.

My downtown is one of mystery and intrigue,

I love the nightlife, the neon lights, the smell of a hamburger grill from the sidewalk,

I love a hot cup of black coffee in a dimly lit diner on the corner of a normally busy city street that is nearly deserted at three am, the smell of cigarettes, roast beef, perfume and bubblegum. The clinking of ceramic worn pastel dishes and the moaning, wailing sounds coming softly from some subdued muffled speaker in the back, takes me back to a place I felt comfortable with. A coffee shop counter in the middle of the night, a woman in a waitress uniform with her order book in her apron, her pen in her hair, her red lipstick on thick and her cigarettes in a padded case with a stylish metal lighter. Her shoes were shined and her hose were new. This was the 1950’s and the newspaper was a day old. The new paper comes in around 4am. A guy named Frank delivers a small bundle and collects for the day before from the waitress. She puts the receipt in the cash register under the cash tray with the checks and petty cash slips. She rings it up as deposit to safe. She pours you some more coffee and goes back to doing her crossword puzzle and smoking a cigarette. Everyone at the counter grabs a different section of the paper.

The headlines read “Local Man Receives High Honor” and goes on to read “Local developer Dan Bird received the highest honor ever bestowed to a citizen of Atlanta. The Builder of the Year is the special trophy that now sits in his office.” Farther down the page is another smaller headline. It reads, “Calvert man drowns while vacationing in Newnan.” That headline changed everything about downtown. My wife’s uncle was that man. At the funeral, we met a cousin who wanted us to come live on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. We did. Soon, I was milking 300 head a day with no days off. Cows don’t take days off. So much for downtown. You should hear me telling stories to the cows. There was this big bullish man who walked into a downtown department store. He told the salesman he wanted a cowbell. “You going to put it around your sweetheart’s neck?” Asked the salesman. “No, I’m going to put it on the gate post and catch whichever bull is coming over to visit her every night while I am in the barn sleeping!”

Now, I just count trolley cars to get to sleep and try to remember what a downtown was like. We just moved here to the sheep ranch in Southwestern Utah outside Zion National Park where her uncle has another ranch for us to manage and there’s not much of a downtown. There is a shopping center with some big stores. There is a big intersection with some big restaurants and some big signs. About half a mile away in the desert is a truck stop. If you go down there on a quiet night and sit in the booth in the back of the diner, you can smell that same smell, hear the same sounds and be with the same people that are always downtown in the middle of the night. You can hear that lonesome truck winding out in the distance, you can hear the change jingling in the pocket of a road worn trucker as he fumbles for change and a tip for the coffee and waitress. He smiles, tips his baseball cap and says, “Be good, see you next time, and thanks!” She winks, wiggles, smiles and with a slow Southern drawl, sugar coats it with, “Now, You take good care, hon. We’ll be here awaitin’ for ya. You come back and get some of that “Nanner-Nanner Puddin’!” The trucker grins as he he slowly marches out the door into the dark.

You can be downtown for a brief moment in time. What’s so reassuring and refreshing about the experience is that you know you can and will be downtown again in the future. Anytime that two or more are gathered, huddled around a cup of black coffee with silverware rattling in the distance, ceramic dishes clanging with heavy, clear drinking glasses clinking as the dishwasher in black dishwasher shoes, torn white apron with wet towel hanging from his black elastic waistband slacks back pocket, slowly makes his way by with both tired arms gripping the busboy tub full of dirty dishes and ashtrays, slogging his way to the back of the kitchen by the sink where he will spend the next hour and a half scrubbing, cleaning, washing, drying and sorting dishes to get ready for the breakfast rush, you can know that he is earning his wages, that the waitress is making her wages, earning her tips, that the restaurant owner is keeping it going and that the truck, car and foot traffic will keep the lights on at 3am enough to keep the coffee machine going, enough to keep the downtown thing going. I miss downtown.