After church on Sunday all the businesses on the square in Springfield stayed open until dark.
And my favorite store was Woolworth’s on the corner. It really was a five and dime, and kids could take a couple of dollars and return home with a sack of toys.
And there was a rest room in the basement of Woolworth’s that had a rest room attendant, an old retired cop that had a gun.
One Sunday afternoon on the road to Woolworth’s my mother read in the Sunday paper that Woolworth’s was installing pay toilets to keep prices down and eliminate the attendant.
She looked back over the seat at me, and said do you understand Van Bruce that from now on, you will go and get your father, and have him go to the rest room with you and he will stand there outside the stall door, until you are finished? Am I clear on that?
I said yes, Mama, but why can’t you take me and you stand outside the outer door?
She said there will be sissies in those rest rooms now, and I can’t go inside to protect you from those sissies.
I asked, Mama, what is a sissy?
She smiled and looked over and said Bruce, please explain that to your son.
Daddy said do you know how you like Rachel Greenhaw at school, and how I like Mama?
Well, sissy boys like other boys, exactly the same way.
I exploded out, No, how can that be, are you serious!
After they quit laughing, my mother assured me that it was serious, there really were sissies, and unless I wanted the sissies to get me I’d go get Daddy to take me to the Woolworth’s bathroom.
If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget all those men lined up outside those pay toilets putting in dimes and waiting on their sons to come out.
It wasn’t a month before they ripped out the pay toilets and hired the old guy back, as the attendant.
But I still go inside the stall and latch the door, so I’m sissy proof.
As I’ve thought and said many, many times, if I’m not a good man I surely cannot blame my childhood.
