I want to....

I want to run over to this store on the corner and pull a cold Coke in a bottle out of a water-bath red cooler. 

I will ask Stanley Roman, the white-aproned butcher who owns the store, to give me 2 pounds of ground sirloin.  He will wrap it up in brown paper tied with skinny red and white string pulled from a dispenser hanging over his head.   Mr. Roman will lean across a spotlessly clean real butcher block to hand me this little package. My grandmother will make it into meatballs for spaghetti sauce.

 I want to put two little cans of white shoepeg corn , the meat, two Twinkies, and some Bon Ami cleanser into my red basket.  Mr. Roman will put this on my grandmother's account and bill her at the end of the month.  I want to see horehound and rock candy for sale near the cash register in clear glass jars with chrome tops. 

I want to walk home to 23 Wind Road  in red sneakers, a white skirt, and a white sailor top with red and blue trim.  I'd like to be able to hand the grocery bag to my grandmother.   Then we'll go  to Bride Tierney's next door to have a "nice cup of tea."

I want it to be 1968 and I look forward to school starting again at Sunset Ridge.  I want to play with my Barbies, pet Ginger the cat, and get some donuts at Fred Yankus' bakery in Hartford after Mass.  Dad and I don't tell Mom that we do this and wipe the incriminating powdered sugar from our lips in the rear-view mirror.

Well, I can still have a nice cup of tea in the cup I used way back then.  I think I'll go do that.

The market pictured was actually in an historic neigbhorhood in Raleigh, NC, where Bruce and I recently took a day trip.  But in my mind's eye, it can be right back in Connecticut, in 1968, where there was once a similar place.