At five o-clock, I was grateful to escape into the icy December darkness, and turned away from the subway toward the department stores a few blocks away. I was behind on Christmas shopping, and there were only a few days left. I went into E.J. Korvette’s, a big discount place that was the Wal-Mart of those days.
Not sure what I was looking for, I wandered from one department to another, and soon was passing the pipe tobacco section.
I hate smoking, always have; but something drew me to the counter. There were large brightly colored round canisters of pipe tobacco on shelves behind it. “Do you have Bugler?” I asked.
The clerk smirked. Most tobacco fans think of Bugler as little more than shredded cardboard. But what did I care? He stooped down behind the counter and came up with the blue labeled canister. The price was ridiculously cheap. “I’ll take it,” I said. “Oh– and a couple packets of cigarette papers.”
From there, it was just a few steps to the electronics department, and a compact-sized AM radio. It took a little longer to settle on a small kid’s record player, with an arm you moved by hand. The real find was in the 99 cent record bin: an album of hymns by Tennessee Ernie Ford.
The whole haul didn’t cost much over twenty dollars. After that, the rest of my shopping came easily.
Christmas morning was still bitter cold, and subway trains were few and far between. It took a long time to get from home to that street, and I stood shivering for what seemed like an hour, pounding on Mrs. Lee’s door.
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