Old School Snacks

When I was a kid, we lived in Houston, TX and my dad managed a Christian bookstore. Pentecostal Bookstore was on Eastex Freeway in a rather crazy neighborhood (dealers would buy offering envelopes for dimebags; the store was robbed 3 times) between a sleazy, Fed-dodging "health practitioner" and tiny family owned gas station. My sister and I spent a lot of summer & weekend days camped out in the office or in the back room reading Chick comics and counting pencils. Even now, when I go into a local bookstore, I drink in that distinct scent that only a hot imprint machine, cellophane-wrapped tract bundles & plastic-framed angels can create.

What got me on this little historical trip was my last package of peanut-butter-cheese-crackers. You see, when lunch was gone and dinner was still a long cash count & commute away, I'd run across the cracked asphalt parking lot to the gas station to grab a snack. Clutching my sweaty Coke and crackers, I'd recline at the store bookkeeper's desk as the window AC jugged out a symphony of frozen notes and Dallas Holm kept time out on the sales floor; a 10 year-old's desperate hunger kept a bay.