by Emma Riley Sutton

Created on: April 10, 2008   Last Updated: June 25, 2008

I am from Creeks Bend. No one has ever heard of it, except for the 38 people who live there. There is an intersection, but no stop sign or flashing lights. We have a post office, grocery store, and a Dairy Prince, all in the same building. Of course, there is the school. Most of the residents of Creeks Bend are teachers, living within walking distance of the school. Silly me, everything is in walking distance of the school.

Granny Keene is blind in one eye and can't see out of the other. She drives her 1961 Ford something or other into town on Tuesdays and Thursdays mornings. Tuesdays she picks up the mail and on Thursdays she grabs her milk. butter, and cheese at the grocery store. You can set your watch to her, twice a week at 8:30 a.m. she arrives. She is an awful driver, a danger to herself and everyone else on ground level. That would be everyone in town, except for the Fosters. They own the only two story house within miles.

The school board held a special meeting back when my mom was in school. They voted to change the start time of classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That was the year she quit wearing her glasses because she was told they did her no good. Her car was only four years old then. From them on, school started at 9:30 on the two days a week Granny Keene came to town.

No one really knows why everyone calls her Granny Keene. She is a self-proclaimed spinster, never married and she never had children. They called her Granny Keene for as long as I can remember and for as long as my mom can remember. I suppose someone said it once and it stuck.

The post office is where all the action happens. There is a half wall that separates it from the grocery store and Dairy Prince. Old men gather to talk about the weather, the crops, and the price of hogs. Old women gather to talk about old men, their sewing circles, and the price of sugar. Children gather to wait for the mail and the news to be collected so they can get a soft-serve ice cream cone just across the half wall.

The grocery store is a throw back for the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Customers are expected to dip out there own flour and salt and weigh it. The local health inspector doesn't seem to have a problem with this. He had best not complain; after all, he owns half of the ice cream machine. His dad owned all of it, but lost it in a friendly when he said Granny Keene could a week without hitting the tree in her front yard with her car. That was the inheritance, half an ice cream machine.

Milk,

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