S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y

When I was little, Saturdays loomed large on the horizon each and every week.

Saturdays meant a trip to town, jumping into my mom’s pear green Impala, and riding down the quarter of a mile dirt road that lead from our farmhouse up to the blacktopped road that snaked through 10 miles of countryside to Hodgenville (population 3,000). Hodgenville was “town” to me all those years ago – and it still carries the same connotation. Whenever I ask my mom what’s going on back home, I mean “what’s going on in town?”

What’s going on in town these days are six funerals last week and a job offer. At 73, my mom’s been offered a job at City Hall! She’s kinda tickled, very flattered, and probably gonna take it. Like she said to me last night, “What else should I do – sit here, watch Days and pet the cat?” She’s gonna get her hair styled tomorrow and think about it. In the south, all major decisions involve group discussion at the beauty shop.

Nellie’s Curly Q, which later became Juanita’s, has been many ladies’ hair destination/decision mitigation facility, for more than forty years. Juanita had a dramatic, dark as midnight beehive and thoroughly loved gossip. Thinking about her, she now reminds me of equal parts Lisa Marie (with Elvis), Elizabeth Taylor (without booze), Delta Burke & LuLu Roman (somewhere between Hee Haw and early Designing Women). With those mile high ringlets of black hair, sparkly bright eyes, quick fingers and quicker barbs, she was my childhood role model for beauty and scandal. Juanita wanted me to go to law school. I chose art school. She was wiser than I ever credited her for.

Anyway, my mom would take me to the library; she’d get her hair done at Juanita’s (while I sat up front eavesdropping on the gossip, reading my library books and sometimes, People Magazine); we’d go the grocery and then on to the dime store, Dollar General, or Rite Aid. In retrospect, town was all about consumerism (except the library). But when I was little, it was about getting away from a very lonely life on the farm, miles and miles away from library books and new socks and cans that mooed like cows when turned upside down.

I realized last Saturday, while I was riding my bike all around town (St. Louis –whose population seems like 3,000 sometimes), that Saturdays haven’t carried such promise for me since I left Kentucky 16 years ago. From the time I entered college, up until 5 years ago, I worked on Saturdays. Since I’ve left the service industry, Saturdays have become days of chores, laundry, sleeping, cleaning, and yes, shopping. But, shopping on Saturdays now kinda gets me down. I relish the memory of tripping about the store light hearted and amazed by all the new things I would try to slip into the grocery cart, cajole by bragging about my hundred on the spelling test, or flat-out beg ad plead to have. Now, I have a list that accompanies me on my Saturday errands and all I want to do is get through the list and get back home. What’s fun in that?

Tomorrow I’m riding my bike and then volunteering at a fundraiser for Doorways, which provides housing for people living with HIV/AIDS. I want to claim my Saturdays back for activity that makes me giddy or gives back something more than cash to the clerk at Walgreens. When I go to bed tomorrow night, hopefully, I will have started a trend -- my Saturday won’t be focused on washing my drawers and buying some deodorant.

Heathen that I am, I can save all that crap for Sunday.