Parker’s General Store
Standing on this spot for over 120 years, Parker’s General Store long served as a tavern and inn, with four rooms available for rent on the second floor. With the advent of prohibition the bar was converted to a lunch counter serving breakfast and lunch, catering mostly to the single male population of the town. The floors are wood and the walls unfinished with exposed beams. Lanterns and hand tools hang from hooks and nails, with canned and dry goods lining the shelves. Though well worn, the place is quite clean and organized. Owned and operated by the middle–aged Louise Madsen, the store also serves as the Foxfield postal sub–station.
Louise Madsen’s father, Arthur Madsen, bought the place from Old Man Parker some thirty years ago. Arthur passed ten years later, leaving the business and its property to Louise. Married once, Louise’s husband—a notorious drunk—left her early in their marriage, and she has been on her own ever since. She is childless and lives in one of the rooms above the store. Louise is also the Foxfield Town Clerk.
Louise is friendly and happily welcomes visitors. She can provide meals for fifty–five cents and is willing to dust off the upstairs rooms if someone needs a place to stay. She will charge a two dollars per night, per room. Louise is also a good source of general information about the town and its inhabitants.
Louise’s hired help is a local named Rodney Greene. In his early thirties, Greene is a tragically wounded veteran of World War II. Struck in the head by artillery shrapnel, battlefield surgeons replaced the missing portions of his skull with steel plate and sewed up his shredded scalp as best they could.
Greene joined the army in 1943, at the age of eighteen, and was shipped overseas less than a year later. Wounded by an artillery shell, he barely survived. Once a handsome man, his head and face are terribly misshapen and rudely scarred by the hurried battlefield surgery he suffered. His I.Q. is probably near seventy, and the left side of his body is partially paralyzed, forcing him to walk with a lurching gait. Though a little slow, he clearly remembers his former life, including the sweetheart who, after seeing his injuries, left him for another man and then moved out of town. Rodney never speaks of this.
Rodney lives with his mother, Ida, in a small house just across the street from the store. Rodney spends most of his free time at the schoolhouse where he helps out with chores, dusts erasers, and plays kickball with the schoolchildren. He is completely harmless and treated with a special respect by the townsfolk.
On any visit to the General Store one may have a chance encounter with Foxfield’s mailman, Sydney Etzler. A widower in his mid–sixties, Sydney is an employee of the U.S. Postal Service. Foxfield mail is delivered to the general store by truck.
Here Etzler sorts the mail and then delivers it to the town and southern farms in a small Ford pickup truck.
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