When I drove around that day this summer up in my old neighborhood in Chattanooga, TN, USA... the afternoon before my 30th high school reunion, a few things struck me.
Secondary things like...the Esso gas station where my mom used to take all our bi-yearly Chevrolets for fill ups and oil checks and scheduled maintenance. What I remember most is that Todd worked there. I don't think we ever really knew what his name actually was, but I like to imagine that his name was Todd.
I was like 8 or 9. I was being chauffeured around by my mom, sitting in the back seat of any one of a series of relatively brand new Chevrolet sedans, surrounded by G.I. Joes and G.I. Joe made-to-scale vehicles and accessories and comic books and walkie talkies.
(Yes...I will be the first 48 year old to admit that for a year or two of my life when I was 8 or 9 years old, I refused to communicate with my mom from the back seat of our car unless she used the other walkie talkie.)
The funny thing is that my mom humoured me all the way through this phase. I would pick up the walkie-talkie in the back seat and say something like "kkkrccchh Where are we going now? kkkrrrccch". My mom would pick up her walkie-talkie in the front seat and say "kkrrccchh We are going to the dry cleaners and then we are going to Aunt Maude's house krrrrcchh". "krrrccchh I don't have to stay at Aunt Maude's house do I krrrchhh?" "krrcchhh No, not until next Friday kkkrrccchh"
So anyways...as far as my 8 and 9 year old car ride memories go, it was a succession of trips to school, trips to church, trips to the cleaners, trips to the mall, trips to my aunt Maude's house, and trips to the Esso gas station where Todd worked.
As I drove around some 30-odd years later, my how things have changed. My old elementary school is there pretty much intact, but not much else. What was once my old church is a Waffle House now. The old dry cleaners is now a CVS. The old mall is now condos.
The only thing that is remotely the same is the old Esso station. Its now a convenience store affiliated with Exxon. You can still fill up with gas there. Chances are; however, that you can't be a queer little 8 or 9 year old boy adoring some 18 year old guy working part-time patching tires and servicing your mom's Chevy.
Its like it was yesterday. I'm 8 or 9 years old and I am looking out of the back right hand side window, watching Todd check the air pressure in the back right tire of our relatively new Chevrolet. He's 18 and has a late 1960s hairy chest and late 1960s long hair and is wearing a uniform and isn't wearing an undershirt. He kneels down and smiles at me and turns his attention to the tire. I'm 8 or 9 years old and I'm in the back seat of a late 1960s Chevrelot sedan, talking to my mom in the front seat with a walkie-talkie, pushing all my toys into the floor board of the car so Todd won't see what a little kid I really am.
Todd walks away and I press my 8 or 9 year old face on the bottom of the back right car window as I watch him, nervously pulling up the door lock with my buck teeth.
Then and there, I decided I wanted to be just like Todd when I got to be 18. I was going to work in a gas station and I wasn't going to wear undershirts anymore.
"kkkrccchh Where are we going now, mom? krrcchh" "krcchhh We have to go to Penny's to buy you some new undershirts krrccchhh" Over and out.
T
T
T 
