“Right? Shop local!” He frowns, rubbing his chin. “Where do you get groceries around here, though?”
“Well, you have two options. Clayton General has pretty much all the essentials—soda, milk, juice, cereal, canned goods, alcohol, frozen stuff, meat, cheese, produce, all that stuff. Benny’s Keg Stand, which we all just call Kegger, has a few other basic odds and ends in a little section near the back, and he’s open later than the general store.”
He shakes his head. “Wow. So, what if you need more than that?”
I shrug. “These days, you order online. If you want to shop in-person, you have to go to Hanover, because they have an ALDI, a Food Lion, and not one buttwoWalmart Supercenters.”
Jamie sighs. “Ahh, so Clayton is small-town living.”
“For most of us, it’s all we know, and we wouldn’t trade it for all the Walmarts and Starbucks in the world.” I finish my drink. “You ready to check out the glory and wonder that is Vinnie’s?”
He tosses back the last of his beer and sets it on the counter. “Sure am. Lead the way.
I laugh. “Well, it’s literally right across the street, so if you get lost on the way, you have issues.”
Jamie laughs as we exit Field’s and stand on the sidewalk. “Yeah, kinda hard to get lost around here, I guess.”
Our main street is US-30, running east to west—if you’re coming east into town it’s called Lincoln Highway, and if you’re exiting town to the west, it’s called Lincoln Way West. Bisecting downtown into quarters are Carlisle Street to the north, and Hanover Street to the south; where Carlisle, Hanover, and US-30 all intersect is a large traffic circle, so we don’t even have a stop light—otherwise we’d be just another one-stoplight town. We’re not even that…we’re a blip on the map, a quick bump around the traffic circle through our cute, quaint little town, and then out again onto US-30.
The island at the center of the traffic circle is known, ironically, as the Town Square. It’s a small, round park crisscrossed by sidewalks in a pattern that resembles a tic-tac-toe board. At the center, in the very middle of the island, is a fountain, ringed by concrete, with a flagpole in the middle, and war memorials listing the veterans from Clayton who have served in wars ranging from the Revolution through Desert Storm. There are park benches here and there on opposite sides of the Town Square, and you’ll often find locals sitting there, chatting, exchanging gossip, feeding the pigeons, and watching the sparse traffic wheel slowly around the circle.
Field’s is on the southwest corner, Vinnie’s is on the northwest, Clayton General is on the northeast corner, and Kegger is on the southeast. There’s a post office next to Vinnie’s, a pharmacy next to Kegger, and a few mom-and-pop retail shops fill in the rest. Clayton Methodist is on Carlisle to the north, and Emory Presbyterian on the corner of Hanover and Lincoln Way West, a few doors down from Kegger. There’s a dentist, a family medical practice, our town’s sole lawyer—John Michael Gregory, Esquire—as well as a few private homes, owned by the wealthiest and most influential citizens. José’s is east down Lincoln Highway about half a mile, and there’s a VFW lodge about a mile west on Lincoln Way West, but you only go there if you’re a military vet, or desperate for one-dollar-pour off-brand light domestic beer served in reused Solo cups
It’s a quaint, quiet, sleepy little town that hasn’t changed much at all in the last hundred and some years. Walking through Clayton is kind of a time warp back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—especially when Pa Chantry rides his vintage buckboard into town, pulled by his mules, Ethel and Lucy, or when Jim Parnell, Mack Lackey, and Harrison Graves decide to ride their horses to Vinnie’s instead of driving a car. Nobody local blinks an eye at that stuff, although the rare tourist or visitor we sometimes get usually does a heck of a double take. Pa Chantry gets the majority of the confused looks, though, with his chest-length black beard, meerschaum pipe, and faded black Stetson—this being Pennsylvania, most assume he’s an Amish transplant or visitor when, in reality, he’s just one of the town oddities.
Speaking of whom—Pa’s buckboard is parked outside Vinnie’s, Ethel and Lucy chomping happily in their feedbags, tails swishing idly.
Jamie does what most nonlocals do at the sight: he tilts his head, frowns, and then glances at me curiously. “Is that part of a reenactment or something?”
I laugh. “Nope. That’s just old Pa Chantry. He’s a quirky sort of guy. You’ll know him when you see him. He lives on a hundred-some acre farm south of town, and he works it the same way as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather did, without any modern tools or equipment. I’ve never been to his place myself, but I hear he doesn’t even use plumbing or electricity, even though he has it.”
Jamie quirks an eyebrow at me. “Takes real dedication to the old ways to use gas lamps and an outhouse when you have electricity and a toilet.”
“Dedication…yeah, that’s one word for it.”
We head across the street, cutting across the empty town square; the fountain splashes merrily, the spraying water and gently flapping American flag, Pennsylvania flag, and M.I.A/P.O.W flag lit by a quartet of yellow floodlights. All the parking spots around the circle are all full, and Vinnie’s is thumping and chugging with the strains of “Smoke on the Water” as covered by Johnny and the Walkers, Clayton’s only musical act, who have played classic rock covers at Vinnie’s every weekend for the past twenty years. The door to Vinnie’s is propped open by an empty keg, on which is sitting a bored-looking Al Vincent, a burly ex-Navy veteran and owner of the town “gym”; the quotes are because the gym is literally just an old abandoned warehouse with boarded-up windows, which Al has filled with cast-off, secondhand free weights, benches, stands, and machines, and charges five bucks a pop to go in and work out; he makes decent money at it, too, because it’s the only place, except the big box gyms in Hanover, to lift weights.
“Elyse, how are ya?” Al says, extending his closed fist to me.
I tap my knuckles against his. “Okay, Al. You?”
He shrugs a heavy shoulder. “Eh, it’s all good. Busy night for these parts.”
I snicker. “Meaning Bob and Rick already went at it?”
“Bob said the Nittany Lions suck, and Rick said the Steelers suck even worse, and then they started swinging.” Al shakes his head, shaggy black hair shaking. “Had to pop Rick one on the jaw to get him to slow his roll. They’re arguing strategy, now, so it won’t be long before one of ’em tries swinging again.”
“I’ll be sure to stay out of the way then,” I say.
Al just laughs, a hearty chuckle. “Ehhh, they’re both clobbered. You could knock over either one of ’em yourself.” He turns a baleful, interested gaze on Jamie. “Don’t know you, bub.”
Jamie doesn’t seem fazed by the less-than-friendly welcome from Al. “That’s because I’m not from around here.” He extends a hand to Al, which I foresee him regretting in three…two…one: Al squeezes hard, and I watch Jamie go pale, wincing, but he doesn’t make a sound and doesn’t let go until Al does, and then Jamie only makes a fist once and then shakes his hand a couple of times. “I’m Jamie. Nice to meet you.”
Al nods, suitably impressed by Jamie’s “manly” endurance of his notoriously brutal handshake. “Yep. You too.”
We head in, and the intense vibrations from the perpetually too loud sound system wash over us, bass thudding in our guts, drums rattling and thudding deafeningly. Johnny’s guitar shrieks and howls as he works on one of his extended guitar solos. The air is smoky, despite the statewide ban on smoking indoors. Vinnie still allows it, and so do the rest of us. The stage is in the front by the plate glass window, with a few stage lights on the ceiling bathing the band in bright yellow, red, and blue; the bar itself runs the entire length of the building from front to back along the right side, with a little space cleared in front of the stage for dancing. Booths line the left side, and round four-top tables fill the rest of the space. The back door is propped open as well, with Matty Murphy, the other Clayton tough guy, sitting on another empty keg, playing a game on his cell phone.
Vinnie’s is crowded with the usual assortment of regulars—the hard-drinking farmers at the bar, their wives gossiping in the booths behind them, a few of the younger residents dancing and milling by the bar. Vinnie’s is a small place and the modest crowd—a hundred-some souls—makes it seem very crowded. When you factor in the crowds at Field’s and José’s, pretty much everyone who lives within thirty minutes of downtown Clayton is represented here, with a few exceptions, like my parents and a handful of other nondrinkers. Clayton being what it is, there’s not much to do around here at night aside from sitting at home and watching TV, or hitting one of the bars and drinking, and it’s not hard to figure out which one most people choose.
