A Visit to Tatum

“A Visit to Tatum”

As many times as I’d driven the stretch of I-44 between St. Louis and Springfield you’d think I would have figured out all of the best places to stop for a bite and exactly how much gas I needed to have in my tank. Over almost three years and a dozen trips I’d never had any problems until that day last month. Ordinarily if I’d left my house without a full tank I knew a stop in Cuba or Rolla would take care of things, but there was so much going on at the office I hadn’t paid attention to details. Now, just past the Cuba exit my fuel warning light came on. It meant I’d be able to drive about twenty-five miles on what was left in the tank but it was thirty more miles to the Rolla exit. Should I risk the drive? It was farm country with no roads to turn off on to for a drive back to Cuba. It seemed like I’d be forced to do a white knuckle drive with one eye on the road and one on the gas gauge. Then up ahead I saw a highway sign that I’d never paid much attention to on my previous trips. It read “Tatum Exit 27”. I’d probably seen the sign before but it just didn’t register in my memory. The warning light glowing on my dashboard told me not to take any chances. I hit my turn signal and eased my way on to the exit ramp.

At the end of the ramp was a small paved road that appeared to connect the exit and entrance ramps but not much more. There was no sign of a building let alone a town and I felt more than a little nervous. I had two choices, get back on the highway and hope I could make it to Rolla or turn on to the small road and see where it would lead me. Neither option was a good one but I chose to find out what was in the town of Tatum.

After about a hundred yards of driving through what felt like a tunnel of Pin Oak trees on both sides of the road I reached an opening. Off to my right was a faded, tattered sign that read “Parker’s Garage” and under that “Gas - Oil - Minor Repairs”. A smaller sign beside it that looked like an afterthought read “Snack Bar”. Up ahead on the left were three rows of identical mobile homes, all white and all in less than good condition. On the right past the sign was the entrance to a large parking area and a three-bay brick garage building. A small, white clapboard church sat at the far edge of the parking area. Beyond that, in every direction was a whole lot of nothing.

To call Tatum a town was a real stretch but all I needed was a full tank of gas and then I’d be on my way. There were no signs of people or activity as I slowly drove past a long row of mailboxes at the entrance driveway to the trailers. Each box had the owner’s trailer address and name stenciled on it. There was a Parker, two Oldachs, three Larimores, two more Parkers, another Larimore another Parker and two more Oldachs. It was hard to miss the strangeness of all those trailers being home to just three extended families.

The two fuel pumps were near the garage and I pulled up to the one marked “Regular”. There was no one in sight and after waiting for a few minutes I got out and grabbed hold of the nozzle. The readout showed I’d only pumped a quarter’s worth of gas when I heard a man calling to me. “Whoa, hold on there, mister. That’s my job!”

I turned and saw a skinny, middle-aged man in blue coveralls walking toward me. The name patch sewn on to his uniform read “Leonard”. “Oh, sorry, Leonard,” I said, “I thought it was self-serve.”

The man took the pump from my hand. “Well, it ain”t, we do the work around here.” His total lack of warmth and even a hint of a smile were surprising.

“I guess a lot of people make that mistake, huh?” Trying to put a friendlier tone on the conversation didn’t seem to have any effect.

“Nope, we don’t get a lot of people here. Don’t want to, cause we’ve got all them trucks to gas up and take care of.” He motioned toward the far end of the dirt and gravel parking area where three identical red vans were parked on a patch of asphalt. From the striping on the pavement it looked like the empty spaces were for other vans that were elsewhere at the moment. On the side of each of them was painted “Parker Delivery”. “That’s why we have these pumps. They’re for them trucks and the school van to Cuba, not for strangers.”

“Then why the sign on the road over there? It makes it sound like you’re a regular business.”

That sign’s nearly forty years old. Old Tatum Parker put it up back when he got his friends at the capital to put in the exit from the highway. He wanted the business and town to be somethin’ the rest of us folks didn’t.”

The readout on the pump now showed that Leonard had already put enough into my tank to get me to Springfield so I wasn’t reluctant to challenge him a little. “So then why didn’t you just tell me that it’s your gas only and send me on my way?”

“Wouldn’t be Christian.” He rubbed the cuff of his sleeve across his nose.

As he finished filling my tank I looked back again to the row of mailboxes along the road. I thought again how odd it was that all those trailers housed the members of only three families. Maybe it was wrong to pry but it was too late, my curiosity had gotten the best of me. “So, Leonard, I saw the names on the mailboxes and I don’t see any other roads around here. Is that everyone in Tatum?”

He pulled the nozzle from my filler and looked at me. It wasn’t a friendly look. “Yeah, that’s Tatum; them trailers, the church and this garage.”

“And are you a Parker?”

“Nope, an Oldach. Is that important to you?”

His demeanor was starting to piss me off but it was also bringing out my snarky side. “No, I was just curious. I’ve driven by this exit dozens of times and never noticed the sign for Tatum.”

“That’s the way we like it, nice and private.” he answered. He pulled a rag from his back pocket, wiped his nose and said, “That’s thirty-one seventy and we prefer cash.”

“No problem, but I’ll need a receipt from you.”

Leonard let out a long, deep sigh and muttered, “There’s always something more.”

I nodded and said, “Yeah, I guess there is.” As I followed him to the garage I looked at the red vans again. “So what does Parker Delivery deliver?”

Leonard was not a patient man. He let out another deep sigh and answered, “You sure do ask a lot of questions. We deliver whatever the folks in Cuba and Rolla ask us to.” It was a vague answer and I knew it would be the only one I’d get. We went into the garage and I laid two twenty dollar bills on the counter in front of him and then looked around.

The small area in front of the cash counter was barely big enough to stand in. The walls were covered with a large array of black and white photographs. They were portraits of what a banner sign said were three generations of the men and women who’d operated Parker’s Garage and Parker Delivery over the years. That was the moment that I understood the mailboxes. There was Jim Parker and his wife Mary Oldach Parker. Next to them were Peter Larimore and his wife Cheryl Parker Larimore. Finishing the top row were Thomas Oldach and Margie Larimore Oldach and finally Nathan Parker and his wife Sandra Oldach Parker. I scanned the entire wall and every single face was attached to one of those three names. That explained the mailboxes and I figured it also explained Leonard’s comment about wanting privacy.

It looked like Leonard was having some difficulty making change in the register and writing out my receipt. I let him struggle and looked into what the sign called a snack bar. There was a short red laminate counter with four stools and holes in the floor where two other stools had been removed. In front of that was a larger, empty area that looked like it might have been a dining room at some time in the past. I could hear noise from the kitchen but saw no one. I turned back to Leonard and asked, “Is there someone in the snack bar that can get me a coffee to go?”

He looked up from his mathematical struggles, appearing to be irritated by my interruption and said, “I suppose she can get you a coffee if you have your own cup.”

“A paper cup would be just fine with me.”

“Look, mister…what’s your name by the way? I need it for the receipt.”

“It’s Wesley Ames.”

“Okay, Mr. Ames, it’s like I said before, we don’t get a lot of strangers here. The men who drive them vans all live here and them boys like their coffee in a real cup.” He went back to working on the receipt.

I shook my head, totally taken aback by his attitude. I walked out to my car and took out the insulated cup that I always kept filled with water. I poured it out on to the ground and walked back inside, right past Leonard and into the snack bar. A woman in the kitchen noticed me through the pass-through window behind the counter. She looked surprised to see a strange face. I held up my empty cup and called out “Coffee?”

She hesitated so long that I thought she was deliberately avoiding me. Finally she made it around the corner to the kitchen door and stood behind the counter. She said nothing and just stared at me.

“I was wondering if you could fill this with coffee for me. Leonard said you would.”

“Leonard don’t run the snack bar but I guess I can do it.” She reached for my cup, looked at it a moment and said, “This is a pretty big cup, I’m gonna have to charge you extra.”

“I sighed, not at all surprised that she was just as unfriendly as Leonard. “That’s fine.”

I watched her fill my cup and wondered how long that coffee pot had been sitting on a burner in an empty snack bar. She put the lid back on the cup, handed it to me and said in a monotone voice, “Three bucks even.”

“Okay, I’ll just give it to Leonard from my change.”

“You weren’t listening to me. Leonard don’t run the snack bar. You gotta pay me.”

I put the cup on the counter, pulled three singles from my wallet and handed it to her.”

She took the bills from my hand and stood there looking at me. Finally, she said, “I accept tips.”

I was really tempted to reach into my pocket and take out a dime but I just shook my head and handed her another buck. She took it without saying anything and walked back into the kitchen.

Leonard had finally solved the riddle of making change and writing it down. He handed me my receipt and change and without saying “Thank you” or “Have a nice day” like every other service attendant in America would do, he turned and walked away, into a small storage room behind the counter and closed the door.

The rest of my drive to Springfield would have been more pleasant if it weren’t for my cup of bitter, boiled coffee and the bad mood I was in from my contact with the strange town of Tatum. A town like none I’d ever seen with people I’d hoped I’d never run into again. And they’d shown me very clearly that they felt the same way.

Before I’d left Springfield the next morning I‘d made sure to top off my gas tank. One of life’s lessons learned the hard way. My drive of two hundred and twenty one miles would be non-stop and, hopefully, uneventful. I wasn’t surprised that right about the time I saw the exit for Rolla I started thinking about my strange experience of the day before. A town that I’d never heard of before was now all I could think about. I kept an eye on my odometer so I’d be ready in time to see the northbound sign for Exit 27 to Tatum and give it the finger as I passed it. I slowed down a little when I got close to the area where I thought it would be. After a minute or so I spotted something ahead as odd as Tatum itself. A short remnant of the green metal post that had held the exit sign protruded above the grass along the shoulder. Someone, and I guessed it was Leonard, had cut down the sign. I looked across the median and saw that the sign along the southbound lanes was also gone. I pulled on to the shoulder and stopped.

A picture started to form in my mind. A picture of a skinny man in blue coveralls, holding a flashlight and a hacksaw, was crouched in the darkness with the guardrails hiding most of him from view. Between passing cars he stood there and sawed away at the posts, first the northbound and then the south. I pictured his smile as each sign crashed to the ground and how he must have enjoyed dragging them into the weeds. And I pictured how his smile must have grown when he was sure that it would be hard for any strangers to find Tatum again.

I smiled, lifted my coffee cup and tipped it in the direction of Tatum. “Here’s to you, Leonard Oldach, you strange man, and to your whole strange town.” I took a sip of bad coffee and added, “And on behalf of every single driver who passes this way, I swear if you hadn’t cut them down I would have.”