Dirks Donuts part one
My real name isn't Dirk, it's Derek, yup, one of those goofy names you seldom hear any longer. Though I'm not small in stature nor a runt I've always been nerdy as they call it today. I played ball and tried a few other summer sports when I was a kid mainly to pacify my dad, but in reality, I'd have rather been holed up in the haymow or my room reading a book. Being a farm kid and strong, everyone thought I should be in sports, but I wasn't fond of sports, nor was I good at it. I would shoot baskets or swing a bat with friends but the organized side of it never quite clicked with me.
By the time I was in middle school I was already known as Derek the dork, in high school and college I was just 'the dork', when I graduated with a double major in mathematics and computer science people decided calling me dork wasn't cool any longer and changed it to Dirk. Everyone knew it still meant dork but it somehow assuaged their guilt by calling me Dirk instead of dork considering my degree of education. I entered and did alright in the corporate world as an IT guy, eventually hitting the jackpot after a summer of diddling around with my computer at home evenings and weekends, the end product was a video game. I didn't think it was much, but one of the larger video game companies did and bought it from me.
Nope, no multi-million-dollar contract, they paid me a hundred grand and a percentage of the sales for a year. I didn't get rich but then again I had done it more for fun than anything else, which led to the development of two more games, neither of which sold for as much as the first but still brought in a hefty amount of money. Well, it was a hefty amount to me, I was 29, had been in the IT field just over five years, had lots of money in the bank and was bored silly, I needed to do something more adventurous, something beyond one's and zero's.
I happened to be dating a girl named Beverly at that time, I saw her each weekday morning around seven fifteen at the local fancy shmancy over-priced coffee outlet. They had people called barista's and other bullshit names for somebody who handed you a cup of coffee and charged you five bucks. No donuts, no pastries, no cookies, they had some equally over-priced croissants and other hoidi toidi crap like that, but no good old downhome bakery stuff. Bev ran the cash register most mornings, we'd been going out a bit over four months when I told her of my boredom.
I tried filling that void with sex, which didn't work, I was nowhere near being a Casanova, but she was a literal dudd in bed, her idea of exciting risqué sex was with ankles on shoulders. She never wanted me to do it from behind because as she put it, "you'll see my asshole and that's just gross". Little did she know if I contorted myself enough to look with her ankles on my shoulders her rosebud was prominently displayed. As I said earlier, I was bored silly, and while Bev was cute in a pixie sort of way she just didn't put any gas in my tank.
I needed to do something ... but what? I'm an IT guy, a boring, predictable, unexciting IT guy. I have a decent body, you don't grow up milking cows and doing other farm chores and stay scrawny, my dick was an average six or so with decent girth. I have all my hair and teeth, I'm six foot one and have as my mom says, a ruggedly handsome face, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, I've been told I'm not hard to look at. With money in the bank and a restless spirit I began looking around at different opportunities not involving IT work.
One day wandering around the downtown area after a quick lunch I happened on something that would change my future dramatically, amongst all the tall buildings of offices and floor level shops stood an old building that had been a Schuster's five and dime with a lunch counter for decades. With a little bit of research, I discovered it had been sitting dormant almost thirty years, the old man who owned it was still alive living in a small community a few miles away. I contacted him and asked if I might call on him, he told me the price of the visit was a six pack of cold Miller Lite, I smiled as I hung up the phone, a 93 year old with a sense of humor.
I arrived at his home at 9:40 the following Saturday to be greeted at the door by a mature woman probably in her very early sixties, when she led me into the den where he was sitting I heard her scold. "You aren't supposed to have beer dad", he laughed, "What's it gonna do, kill me?" Then he belly laughed.
I liked this guy, a lot. Over the course of the next few hours he only took a few sips of his beer as he told me all about the Schusters five and dime building. His parents had owned it, both he and his three siblings had all worked there as youngsters and two of his kids worked there under him until it closed in 1992, the building had been vacant since. Many a realtor had approached him through the years and each one was turned down. Fearing vandals or vagrants might try to make it a flop house he had a security system installed and beefed up the entry points.
Other than some graffiti and a few broken windows through the years, which were repaired right away, there had been no other damage to the building, he was wealthy enough that he kept power and gas service to the building for heat. The water had been turned off as nothing internally demanded it's presence, he told me once every three months he had his daughter drive him into town where he would walk through the building. When I asked about selling it he stiffened.
"I don't want another damned hi-rise office building or condos built there, that spot possesses too much history, I keep it maintained and I have enough money to cover taxes and utilities long after I'm gone. My daughter Jenny isn't going to sell it either when I kick the bucket, at least not until the right offer comes along."
I foolishly made an assumption that he meant price, when I asked what the magic number was he laughed.
"Sonny, you don't have enough money to buy that building just for the sake of buying it, what will sell that building is what somebody wants to do with it."
As our time together wound down I asked if I might see the inside of the building, he yelled for his daughter who told me she could meet me there at two when her dad normally took an afternoon nap for a few hours. Driving back to town I wasn't sure what I might come across in that building, but something inside was driving me to find out. Across the street from the old five and dime were three small shops at the base of a hi-rise office building, a Subway, a Five Guys and a tiny dress boutique store, sitting in Five Guys I ate and wondered what that store had been like thirty or forty years ago.
Before Jenny arrived I walked over and stared in the window between some ripped newspaper on the inside of the glass, something that caught my eye immediately was the old lunch counter, on the back wall in faded letters was a sign that said, "how it used to be" with an old menu board beneath it. It boasted a hamburger for fifteen cents, a bowl of soup for a dime, coffee and a donut for fifteen cents. That sort of thing captivated my imagination as I pictured how things were not so very long ago, simple things that society had managed to make hard.
In an effort to constantly make things better, faster, and more efficient we had somehow lost sight of the fact that simpler is often better. With my face plastered to the window I felt a tap on my shoulder, when I turned Jenny was standing with a smile.
"I do the same thing sometimes, come inside where you can see things more clearly."
Inside I was captivated by the surroundings, the original counter and stools from the nineteen thirties still existed, it all needed to be cleaned and the stool covers replaced but it was intact. Seeing the old phosphate dispensers brought back memories of going to our local drug store where if I had been good all week mom would get me an orange/lime phosphate for a nickel. Simpler days, less complicated days, when it closed in 2007 the entire little town I was raised in was saddened. To the city fathers it was just another building razed for the sake of "progress" as they called it. It along with three adjacent buildings were replaced by six store fronts, of which only three are occupied. Was it really progress?
Looking in the window earlier I would have had no way of knowing there was a second story behind the store façade which housed what used to be her grandparents apartment. In what was once the master bedroom was still an old metal bed frame with an open box spring, the kind that used to squeak like crazy during sex. I laughed when I saw it, she blushed slightly then giggled.
"There was more than one night that those springs kept us kids awake, they got a workout that's for sure. Those two were like a pair of rabbits, how they only ended up with three kids is beyond me, birth control then wasn't what it is now."
I had taken many pictures with my cell phone during the hour and a half we'd been inside, asking if she'd like to get a coffee with me she declined and then added.
"You can take me to dinner though. I've been widowed a little over two years now and haven't left the house since, but I kind of like you and having been in your presence as long as I have today I don't think you're a serial killer. You can pick me up at six, dress nice, where we're going you can't get through the door without a tie. If somebody shows up without one, the greedy buggers have some they'll sell you for seventy-five bucks, so it'll be better if you just wear one from home."
I found myself thinking, well, well, well, this will certainly shake up my boring world, I had a newer suit that had only been worn to a wedding, it fit nice and would do just fine. I showed up at five fifty with a bouquet of seasonal flowers and handed them to her as she opened the door, behind her was a lady I assumed worked as a house maid of some sort who took them and went to the kitchen area. I followed Jenny into the den where her dad sat in a wheelchair.
"Daddy, we're going out to dinner. Gloria will be here with you this evening, she'll get you ready for and into bed, I'll see you in the morning."
Kissing him goodbye he patted her hand and told her to have fun. I told her I would bring the car to the front steps and she told me to never mind, Ellis the groundskeeper and driver was bringing her car to the steps as we spoke. I wasn't even given the chance to open a car door for her, Ellis was waiting at the ready as we approached the Mercedes S 560e Sedan, I was duly impressed, those cars start at 110 grand. It wasn't until we were in the car that I took notice of Jenny and how spiffed up she was, unlike the morning and afternoon when she'd been in jeans and a sweatshirt.
