Back in the Day

People avoided Charles Pickens whenever they could.  While he was a charming elderly fellow, his major flaw was starting every conversation he ever had with a friend or stranger “Back in the day…”  Didn’t matter none who it was, but Charles, who worked for over thirty years at Catco Farm Supply, would put his thumbs at the corners of his overall straps, rock on his heels and spin a yarn or two depending on the amount of time he had.

While most of his tales seemed taller than the corn in the first weeks of autumn, Charles was always ready to tell a story or two of what things were like back in the day.  Some of the customers thought he was charming, but most of the townies were annoyed to no end once he started one of his stories.  

Bert Cummings, owner of Catco, always thought about putting his storytelling to use, but it just never seemed like anything would ever come of it.  As soon as people heard his old catch phrase, back in the day, Charles had already begun to spin the tale and there was no escape.  

Charles was only about sixty years old, but if you listened to his tales, you’d swear he was born and raised in a long bygone era.  What made him a tragic figure around the feed store was the fact he was a diabetic and he had some delusions and he would wave his hands all around his head when he told one of his stories.  

He also had a long history of mental illness according to his past records, but he was not violent nor did he have a history of violence with the exception of a hold up where he shot back at law enforcement in order to make a get away.  He was not successful in his attempt, but his lawyer was able to get him into a psychiatric hospital and not a federal lock up.  

Was he lucky on that accord?  It seemed like it on the surface, but when the final tally came in, the scale did not tip in Charles’ favor.  

His family history was just as tragic since his father and Taylor, his only brother had died a violent death, both having been murdered.  

          "Back in the day, we did things differently." He would start speaking as he began sweeping the floors.  Nobody paid him any mind, because it was common knowledge that he was crazy.  

          "Charles!" Bert would call from the register. Owner and overseer, Bert Babcock had employed Charles since he left the looney bin six years ago, but that did not mean he wanted Charles to spin one of his tales while there were customers in the store.

          "Whatcha want, boss?" He was already rocking on his heels.

          "I need you in the back." Bert yanked his thumb toward the door of the loading dock.  Dutifully Charles wandered to where he was told without further question.

           "Back in the day When my wife was still alive..." He began once he had a pallet jack in his hands.  Jake Winston, the unofficial boss of the Receiving Section, rolled his eyes.  His grandfather was always telling Jake how much better things were back in the day. It was also a known fact that Charles had never been married.  There was a rumor that when he was seen with a blonde woman just before the armed robbery and that she was the main reason he did it in the first place, but back in the day it wasn’t a good idea for a colored man to be seen with a white woman.  That much Jake Winston knew.  

           "Charles, keep those pallets moving." Jake ordered as Charles continued telling his story.

           "I hate Bert for sending him back here." Wayne complained.

           "I feel sorry for him." Jake stroked his shaggy beard, "He ain't got nobody."

           Wayne shook his head as he grabbed a stack of invoices. Charles was telling them how he almost got passage on the Titanic even though it happened four decades before he was even born.

“I just get tired of his stories.” Wayne shook his head.

“It’s harmless.” Jake chuckled, “You want him to be an ax wielding maniac?”

“Guess not.” Wayne snarled.

          The Moore and Shipman Show came to town that summer.  While it was just a rundown second-hand carnival, it was about the only excitement the town had in the hot humid summer.

Charles was as excited as he could be as he never stopped telling stories about how he and his brother Taylor would go since the show was all there was for entertainment back in the day. He would go into great detail about the freak show where he had seen his first naked woman, granted she was covered with a thick layer of fur.  

           "If he says back in the day one more time, I'm gonna lose it." Wayne groused.

          "Relax kid, he will go to that poor excuse for a show and remember how back in the day, things weren't always so great." Jake nodded.  Wayne just snorted. Jake chuckled, “Five minutes till quitting time.  Let’s say we clock out early.”

“Suits me just fine.” Wayne followed his boss out the door leaving Charles there to finish his story to an empty loading dock.  

            As it turned out, Raymond Moore, one of the co-owners of the carnival, was a lazy slug most of the time who wore a filthy white t-shirt and suspenders to hold his pants in place.  He had a cheap plaid jacket he had ordered from Montgomery Wards along with a straw hat when he became the barker for the show.

          Charles Pickens acted like a child like he was back in the day, his brown face had a special luster of a child who could not wait to see what was coming next.  Wayne and Jake, who happened to be there with their kids and wives, watched from afar, both amused more with Charles' reaction that they were with anything the two-bit show had to offer.  

There was a pronounced musty, stale odor from the canvas and the sawdust, mixed with the smell of the sweat of the crowd of folks on the very humid day created an odor that seemed to linger and hang on everything within the parameter of the carnival grounds. Using their printed programs to fan themselves, Jake and Wayne also had a hip flask, but the moonshine did very little to keep them cool, in fact it seemed to make things even more unbearable with each hit they took off the flask.

          Meanwhile Charles tottered to the midway where Bankers vied for the attention of the passerby to put down some money for a chance to win a prize. Many of them wore turbans to add to the mysterious atmosphere Of their schtick.  Like a kid in a Candy store, Charles Boldly put his money down in hopes he would be the next big winner, but he never was.  It didn't take long before he had just a single dollar left in his pocket.  Fortune was not on his side like it had been back in the day.

          His father Big Richard took him and Taylor his brother when Charles was ten years old.  It was a hot summer day like this one and Charles and his brother couldn't lose.  They walked out with a treasure chest of treasures like a couple of Buccaneers and their dad telling them over and over about how proud he was of them. That's how it was back in the day.  Now both Big Richard and his brother were gone.  All the people that mattered to him were laid to rest years ago, it seemed.

          He had to go to the hospital where he’d get a “tune up” as Dr. Blanchard called it.  He had to go visit with Dr. Blanchard, a tall, lanky man with glasses that did not seem to fit his face at the hospital where he got his pills.  Dr. Blanchard kept asking Charles if he saw his father or Taylor when he was walking the street or at work at Catco. If he said yes, Dr. Blanchard would make him stay at the hospital and if he said no, he'd be fibbing.  His mama told him lying was a sin and God didn't take no sinners in Heaven.

           Still the hospital was a horrible place to be. All those patients would scream such awful things so that the staff would have to restrain them to their beds with leather straps.  In the morning they would bring in fire hoses to wash out the rooms.  Charles could still remember how cold and hard that water felt when they turned it on.  

“C’mon this way.” A cane reached out and hooked Charles’ arm.

“What be that way?” He pulled his arm away in self defense.

“Fun. House.” He winked.

“What be in there?” Charles asked.

“Things beyond your wildest imagination.” The skinny man in the red and white striped shirt answered. 

“You know back in the day…” He began, but the man spoke over him.

“Back in the day things were good weren’t they?” He laughed.

“Shure ‘nuff.” Charles pointed his finger at the man.

“Yeah...tell me about it.” He nodded.

“In there?” He pointed to the entry door. 

“Right in there.” He nodded again as he pointed one finger for emphasis.

“I got me a dollar.” Charles pulled it out.

“Getcha a ride.” He snatched the dollar from Charles’ hand and led him to a gondola that was used to transport a customer through the Funhouse.

“Is it dark in there?” Charles asked as he sat inside the craft.

“As dark as you can imagine.” Whispered the man in his ear as the gondola began to move in the water.

Dark.  Every night the staff would shut off the lights so that all the demons in the heads of the patients would be free to run about jabbing them with pitchforks.  You could hear some of them groan in pain.

The doors opened and shut immediately behind Charles.

The skin on the forehead of a man suddenly split open revealing a white skull beneath the flayed skin.

There was a Negro hanging from an elm tree in his front yard as his house was a blaze and men dressed in white sheets laughed in the final moments of the man’s life slowly drained from him.  There were the hoofbeats of two dozen horses exiting with their riders.  He saw it all.  He saw them set fire to the house.  He heard the woman scream as they put the rope around her neck before they put one around her husband’s neck.

“Get away from that window, son!” He heard his father yell, but it was too late, the deed was done.  What they had done to those folks was meant to be a warning for the rest.

A nurse put a syringe in his arm.  He could feel himself floating above the clouds.

“You won’t feel a thing.” Her voice sounded so distant.

Frontal lobotomy.  He still had the scars.

Things were good back in the day.

There was no pain.  There was no sadness.

Onward as the gondola was pulled through the darkness by the chain.  

A skeleton jumped out of the darkness and screamed.

Mr. Lloyd stopped breathing in the bed next to him, his leather straps still attached.  He called out that he could not breathe, but nobody came.  No one.  

Daddy went to St. Louis for the death of one of his kin, but then he got into a steamboat gambling card game where one of the players said he was dealing off the bottom of the deck.  The player had a gun and shot his father before he could deal another card.  He got a couple of his friends to dump his father’s body over the side into the Old Man River where he would float like a log until someone would report it to the sheriff. 

He remembered when one of the staff came to tell him about it. There was a pat on the back, but that was all.

By the time they brought his father’s remains home, there wasn’t much left, but bones after the fish had feasted on what was left.

There was no arrest or even so much as an investigation. On the certificate it read, “Death by drowning.” 

Nobody would question it.

Back in the day that’s the way it was.

Everybody got along, you know.

Everybody.

St. Lucy’s was a psychiatric hospital on the banks of the Mississippi River a few miles north of Memphis, Tennessee.  For the incurably insane, the common practice was electroshock all the way to a frontal lobotomy. Once the frontal cortex was removed, the patient would no longer be able to resist and they would become as gentle as a lamb, but there were often mistakes made in this procedure.  In Charles’ case the removal of extra tissue had left him with the inability to distinguish between what was real and what was imagined.  Indeed his defiant behavior no longer surfaced, but the essence of who he was had been subverted.  

Nobody cared, only the results mattered.  His sexual identity had also been abated, but that was considered a bonus as he was now considered harmless by the staff.  He would not be reaching out for the private places on the nurses.  

There was a display of a man dressed in scrubs armed with a hacksaw and covered in fake blood…

Dr. Blanchard sat on Charles’ bed after the operation.  He put his hand on Charles’ arm, “You will be released soon...to a home where they will take care of you and you will be able to have a job.”

“Oh doc, that is good, right?” Charles smiled.

“It is a better prognosis than I was hoping for.” He patted him again before exiting the room to talk to other patients.

Back in the day…

The door opened and Charles sat in the gondola as the skinny man in the red and white striped shirt helped him out.  As he helped Charles, he asked, “So whadda think?”

“It was good...jus’ like back in the day.” Charles adjusted himself once he was on his feet.

“You tell your friends about this funhouse, eh?” He winked.

“I be sure to.” Charles nodded emphatically. 

Robbery had gotten him in trouble, but when he tried to shoot back at the police, there was little option for Charles Pickins.  His lawyer convinced a jury that Charles suffered from mental illness bad enough to get him sent to St. Lucy’s where he would spend the majority of his adult life. 

Before the operation, Charles was an angry man, but through treatment.  They were able to cure him.  That’s what they said.  That’s what Dr. Blanchard told him before they discharged him from St. Lucy’s.  Using the special treatment,  they were able to turn him into the man they wanted him to be.  Back in the day was just a memory with no real substance anymore.  Back in the day there was just an idle hope that his life would be filled with promise and hope, but as he walked away from the funhouse, he knew it was all just a misplaced delusion.