Shoes for Robert

 Shoes for Robert

If you stick around long enough, and have the mindset of one who holds things in memory, long after they should have been forgotten, eventually you just have to purge it, like a tumor, or it will overtake you. 

There are many such stories, some now humorous years past the time it wasn't, some that continue to cut, long after the sharp slice, now dull and painful.

She was pompous as a pomegranate dangling upon the hem of a Pharisee. She hailed from Albany where lately she had arrived in our tiny city, comparatively, full of resentment for her demotion. It was her last stop and she was going to take it out upon us at full price. 

There was a family of fine cooks out by the airport and it was the habit of many to be found dining with them every Sunday. So it was just a matter of time this pompous Presbyterian would find her way to the finest. 

We do not recall the season she went into her closet, arranged by the proper colors of proper wear, perhaps the dark season of fall and winter, but she in her fashionable attire, dragging her husband with the humble name Joe, sat to dine. It was at the time of dessert the delight began, for she was ordering sin. Something familiar to this Presbyterian, even if she only saw it in others.

Well, from then on then, this was her family, this family of cooks. She would do anything for this sin, to offering the chief cook discounts on shoes, why for the whole family, why not, of which he fully took advantage, as the poor salesmen had to drop everything, to please him. And oh, every Christmas and Thanksgiving and Independence Day of Russia had to be catered in, with the stipulation of a big pan of sin.

Oh, he was all in. Charging for the privilege full price. But it mattered not to her, they were family.

It was a bitter sweet day she retired to an island around Tampa. No more chocolate delight. The new manager aghast at the price paid. No more discount on shoes. Why what was a fine cook now to wear? No more privileges for anyone. It had all come to an end. 

The pomegranates upon the hem left jingling.

The lady finally passed on two years ago. Robert is retired from cooking.