An unforgettable man

Late one summer morning in the early 1950s, a strange occurrence set upon we folk of the small Headtown community a mile from Jonesboro. Up the gravel road came a school bus, but not the ordinary yellow kid carrier. This one was painted silver-gray, and had seen its best days in the Washington County school system. On the sides of the bus where the black block lettering once resided was a nice cursive that read "Paul Good's Rolling Store" in red letters. Paul was a farmer from Fairview community between Jonesboro and Fall branch and he also owned a small country store alongside Highway 81. Paul was probably much like many other people of the area and was descended from Scots-Irish ancestors. He perpetually wore pin-stripe bib overalls while working, and was a man of ruddy complexion who didn't talk a lot when there was nothing to say. He was not real tall, was a wee bit stocky, had lost parts of some fingers in a farming accident years before he came into my life, and he was a very likable person. I was standing on my grandmas porch that day doing whatever it is that seven-or-eight-year-old boys do in summertime. The sight of the bus alarmed me for I figured it was time to go back to school and I was in no way mentally prepared for such an ordeal. When the bus came to a stop in a cloud of road dust in front of our house, I ran inside and told grandma that there was a store parked outside; my two or three years of schooling had taught me to read a little bit. I raced back outside just in time to see the bus door swing open and Mr. Good step out. Right behind me came my extremely shy grandmother and she and Mr. Good greeted each other like old friends; in the country that could be anything from a nod of the head on up to a hearty "howdy". This in itself was amazing to me; grandma usually shied away from strangers like a bird from a snake. What I didn't know was that a week before while I was out exploring the woods and fields, Mr. Good had stopped by and met my uncle who persuaded my grandma to talk with the man. He explained what he was doing, and of course my grandma was very interested; she probably hadn't been inside a real store since my granddad shut his down about ten years earlier. She wasn't peculiar; she was grandma. Well, there he was starting a new route at our house and he would continue being there each Friday morning thereafter for many years. The only time he wasn't there on Friday was when the weather prevented it, when he was too sick, or if he had mechanical problems with the bus. In the latter case, he would make it up on Saturday if possible. The bus wasn't one of the behemoths you see on the roads these days; it would have hauled something like 33 passengers including the driver. Paul had removed all the seats less the driver's, and had installed wooden cubby-hole shelves in their place down nearly the entire length of each side. Every shelf had a small strip of wood across its bottom-front to keep items from sliding out as he bounced along the pothole-plagued roads. In the cubby holes was placed just about everything you could find in a regular rural store except for ice cream and milk; etc., there was no convenient way to power coolers or freezers on vehicles in that era and the coolers themselves were prohibitively large. However, he had an ice machine at his regular store, and he had a small ice box bolted inside the bus that would hold a block of ice, a few dozen eggs, and small blocks of fresh-churned butter. Paul was savvy enough to learn his customer's buying habits and each day he would have special items his people on a particular route usually wanted. The back part of the store held the produce such as sacks or baskets of potatoes, cabbage heads, tomatoes, and whatever was in season. He also left room to haul the large sacks of livestock feed a lot of customers wanted, plus large bags of flour and corn meal. In spring he was sure to carry a variety of garden and flower seed. Behind the rear wheels on the drivers side of the chassis he had a cage installed for carrying chickens. He hardly ever began the day with any fowl aboard unless someone specifically wanted one, but on many days he would trade groceries for pullets. I remember several times grandma would have to trade one or two of her chickens for eggs and butter; she didn't like to do it but it was a necessity when money was scarce. On down the road, someone might trade Paul some eggs for another good laying hen. Paul was a wise and caring businessman, and was well respected by people county-wide. He never failed to go to the wake or funeral home when one of his customers or one of their close family members died, and many times he was asked to help carry the casket. By the late 1950's his notoriety was so great that he and his rolling store were pictured on the cover of a national magazine and there was a nice write-up about him. I wish I could remember which magazine it was, but I don't; my mom kept a copy of it but it was destroyed in our house fire in 1965. One Friday when he was running late, he asked me if I would ride along on the remainder of his route and help him sack and carry items to houses along the way. Of course I agreed after asking my grandma if it was ok, and that afternoon was like a bit of heaven for me. I learned a little about the grocery business, and I learned a lot about the people business. For my service, he stopped at my cousin's newly opened store and bought me a cold Pepsi-Cola. About 30 years later and after I was married and living in Carter County, Paul looked me up. It was about this time of year in the late 1980s and he had potatoes for sale. Remember I wrote that he was savvy in carrying out his business? Paul had a knack of putting small potatoes most of the way to the top in a bushel basket and then placing large potatoes on top. When he came knocking, I knew what to expect, but I cared enough for him that I bought his potatoes anyway. Carolyn fussed when she found the marbles toward the bottom, but a few weeks later he was back and again I bought his potatoes and this went on for several years until one day I heard that he had suddenly become sick and had died. To say the least, the funeral home was packed and people were lined up double-file all the way across the parking lot patiently awaiting their turn to pay respects to an old friend and his family. Paul Good was the most unforgettable character I ever met.
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