Hangin' in Auburn, Part 4

[Hangin' in Auburn. Part 3]


Whenever I'm in Auburn, which has experience a population increase of about 1,000 persons since 1970, I find myself looking at people to see if I recognize anyone.

And chances are good that I will recognize someone. Also, even the people I don't know, most of them, look at least vaguely familiar.

Like the snarky waitress. Where had I seen her? Or the bald guy sitting across the table from me. Oh yeah, that was Bill. He used to have flowing blonde hair.

Like I said, I should have run out and invited good old Dennis to sit with us. Oh well.

Bill and I sat and chowed down on French fries (or potato wedges, or some such thing) until Andy showed up. These fries came with "California sauce," which I had never heard of, and I suspect such a sauce sounded very "trendy" to those sitting in the newest Auburn dining hotspot.

It was funny to me to be eating at this place. For as long as I could remember it was called "Blackwells." Blackwells and JC Penney the only places in Auburn to purchase clothes for many years (until Wal Mart came to down, destroying downtown shopping for good). Oh sure, Hecks and Murpheys and Mr. Wigs all came and went, but none of them were very good places to buy clothes (not that Wal Mart is).

So I had eating at the very place where I once bought a pair of overpriced jeans. As I recall, the "Top Shop," which was formerly called "The Shirt Shack" was next door. I thought back to when I was a kid and my mom bought me a kickass iron-on of a skull head. That shirt rocked!

I wonder what happened to The Top Shop. I placed for The Top Shop's baseball team when I was in little league. We sucked. Russell B. was our catcher. Good guy, Russell (and built like a little league catcher). I wonder what happened to him.

Before Russell got involved in death metal and drugs and stuff, we were good friends. He played with GI Joes until he was 15. A year later, at 16, he decided playing with death metal and drugs was more fun. It was a sharp and interesting change in one's life.

Soon enough Andy arrived, and thank God, because Bill and I were starting to run out of "your mother" jokes.

The snarky waitress, who found good fodder in calling Bill things like, "dipshit," didn't really know how to respond to the sarcasm of Andy. Oh yeah, if sarcasm was a profession, Andy would excel. Too bad for him it isn't, which is why he sells paintball guns. Man, I wish I sold paintball guns.

With two people speaking Auburn dialect, the cussing is a given. With 3 people speaking Auburn dialect, it becomes a bit of a competition, I think. This is where I drop out. It's not that I dont' want to partake, it's just that I'm rusty. I started using dirty words when I was about 8 or 9 years old... It's just the Auburn way.

My cussing ability slowed down when I went away to college and joined a fraternity, full of preppy kids who used big words like "lackadaisical" and "apathy" and "Sports Medicine 101."

Yeah, a lot of "Sports Medicine" majors at Ball State. I won't get off track.

I quit cussing almost completely about 5 years ago, when I became some kind of "grownup." It wasn't intentional. No, it just had to do with the sad fact that I was surrounded by people who don't preface ever noun with an f-bomb. Too bad. I kinda find the colorful language... Well, colorful. Colorful is good.

I think back to the guys at the street department where Bill and I worked. Professional cussers those guys. I've got a post about that somewhere that I'll have to dig up.

Here's the thing about the Auburn personality, and yes, I'm probably idealizing a bit, but Bill hadn't seen Andy in 10+ years. Andy and I hadn't seen each other in 10+ years (before this summer). Bill and I hadn't seen each other in nearly 2 years. And yet there was none of this awkward, "Oh, hi sir, how are you? I recall you..."

Something about the lacking formality of a small and simple community made it seem as though there was never any need for formality because of time. In the same way that the snarky waitress called Bill a jackass (and this was entirely appropriate), a conversation was freed from formality and able to just be.

Andy shared a story of how he was in the same bar a few nights before when he bumped into an old guy by the name of Don W. Don W. ran a pawn shop downtown for a number of years (and I'm not sure if it's still there) where he sold music equipment and instruments to all the kids in town who hoped to start their new rock bands. Since he was in Auburn he could easily rip kids off, charging up to several hundred dollars more for cheap gear that what he should have. And the simple kids of Auburn didn't know any better.

I recall the bass guitar and amp that my friend Dan I. bought from Don W. I tell you the truth: Rubber bands stretched across a milk jug sounded better than this bass. But Dan spent several hundred of his hard earned dollars and Don's ripoff shop.

Andy's story went like this: He approached the aging Don (this ripoff store owner) and said, "Don, when the hell did you get so old?"

Don, without missing a beat, looked Andy up and down and said, "When the hell did you get so fat?"

Andy was amused by the clever comeback.

Since Andy had arrived we all ordered our beers. Andy ordered a stout. Bill ordered a wheat (or something). I ordered a beer worthy of ridicule: A strawberry blonde pale ale.

I was called a number of names for doing this, "pansy," among them. I'm realizing that the social norms of our circle, or of Auburn, for that matter, could be downright offensive to people in more populous areas. I'm not sure what this means, but I didn't learn anything about such a phenomenon from my college Sociology professor.

I did learn that if you ate your lunch in her classroom she would become very mad.