We stopped by the mall in my hometown around 7:00 Saturday evening. As a teenager, back in the 80s, I remember the local mall being the main hang out. It was always full of people on the weekends, and it was a place to see and be seen.

It’s gone through a major makeover since then, and it looks really good. The decor is modern and clean. There are, or have been, many and varied stores in this mall, including, currently, the only book store in town. But it’s virtually vacant now days.

I took the above photos standing in the middle of the main corridor, looking down the two main wings (there’s three wings total) at the anchor stores. There were a total of five people in the hall in the top image, and just two people (sitting on the bench) in the bottom image.

Walking down the halls, I noticed all the smaller stores had zero customers, and the larger stores had just a handful scattered about. I don’t know how the stores survive.

In my my current town, on a Saturday evening, these images of the mall would show 20 to 30 people in the halls. Every store, no matter how small, would have at least one customer, and cash registers all over would be taking in money.

I doubt my old home town mall will still be open in five more years. It’s a nice place, with a good location in the town, but it’s still just dying. I’m really saddened to see this happening.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

We went to my hometown for the day, to visit my mom. On the way, I noticed that a landmark beside the road was gone. For as long as I can remember, the Solid Gold Crazy Horse Gentleman’s Club has existed on the main highway about a third of the way between my current town and my old home town.

I’ve never been in the building — never even been in the parking lot — but I see it every time I go to and come from my hometown. It’s just one of those perennial landmarks you notice because it’s just obvious. But now it’s gone. The building has burned to the ground. There’s only chunky ash and a charred back wall left of the building, although the sign in the parking lot looks undamaged.

I always notice the sign because they sometimes have very interesting names of the guest girls announced on it. My favorite guest girl’s name was “Tess Tickles.” If the sign doesn’t announce a girl’s name, it advertises some event that sounds very fun: various wrestling challenges or “beauty” contests. But now there is no information on the sign at all.

Will they rebuild, or is this landmark gone forever? Will the new building look like the old building? It’s kind of a sad thing, really.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

In the autumn of 1979, I was in 7th grade (middle school). One day I was sitting in the front seat of our school bus, on the door side, play fighting with my friend. We weren’t being especially rowdy — we were just being silly on our bus ride home in the afternoon.

For some reason, an older guy in the other front seat, behind the driver, took exception to our playing. I was sitting on the aisle side of our seat, across from this guy. He told us to stop. I don’t remember exactly what I said back, but it must have been something smart, because the guy leaned over and slapped me on the cheek. He didn’t hit me real hard (not as hard as he could’ve), but he did slap me. I leaned over and slapped him back. I didn’t hit him hard — it was just a touch, really.

I was a scrawny little 12-year-old geek, maybe 90 pounds, soaking wet. He was a hulking 25-year-old line backer, maybe 300 pounds, hungry. OK, maybe he wasn’t. But he was older than me, taller than me, and considerably heavier than me. He looked like a kid who had failed a couple grades and should have been in high school, on the football team.

When I popped him on the cheek, his face changed from an annoyed frown to an enraged roar. In a flash, he reached out and grabbed me with both hands, picked me up out of the seat, shook me in the air, and hurled me down the aisle toward the back of the bus.

I landed on the floor of the walkway, surprisingly unhurt. It’d happened so fast, I was just then thinking, uh-oh. The bus was stopped and silent. I slowly got up off the floor, scared of what might happen next. This guy could tear me apart, I thought.

No one was looking at me — all faces were forward. Even the hulking monster wasn’t looking at me. The bus driver, a high school senior girl, had her head leaned back over her seat, and she had her hand up to her face. When I stood up, I saw her hand and face were covered with blood. What happened to the bus driver? For a moment I thought she might be dead.

Well, here’s what happened: I was wearing my Dingo boots that day, and when the hulk twirled me in the air, my legs and feet whipped around and hit the bus driver straight on the nose. Her nose broke and blood sprayed everywhere.

A couple kids helped her off the bus and across the street to the nearest house to use a phone. I sat down in the back of the bus, out of sight of the mountain of mean, while we all waited for a replacement bus driver to come and take us home.

* * *

The next morning, I was called to the principal’s office. The hulk was there, too. The principal asked us what happened, and I said he picked me up and threw me across the bus. He said I hit him and busted his lip. The principal looked at his unmarked lip, then at the whole mountain, then at little mole hill me. He gave us a stern talking to, and then dismissed us. We both walked out quietly, and to my knowledge, neither of us received any kind of punishment.

The big kid rarely road the bus, before or after that incident, and I never ended up near him again when he did. I saw him occasionally , at a distance, around school, but we never had any direct contact. He just ignored me, and I pretty much forgot about him, too, after a few weeks.

That girl never drove our bus again, but some time later I heard she was “OK.”

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

As I’ve mentioned before, my mom owns a small restaurant in my hometown. It’s name is Byrd’s (the original owner’s last name), and it’s fairly popular for its size and location. She and my step-dad did a really good job over the years making it into a great little eatery.

For a couple years, they had a second restaurant inside a convenience store, on the other side of town from the first location. Although it was supporting itself, it was just too much work for them to keep it up. They found a buyer for the location and equipment just before my step-dad passed away. The new owners had an agreement with my step-dad (verbal, “gentlemen’s agreement”) to not use the Byrd’s name and to not serve a tenderloin biscuit (a signature menu item).

Unfortunately, after his death, that agreement was apparently dismissed. Not only do they serve tenderloin biscuits, but their new sign uses the same colors as the Byrd’s sign and logo. (This situation is what prompted the move towards trademarking everything, which I mentioned in an earlier blog post.) Other things, that I won’t go into here, proved to us that the new owners were willing to be at least a little underhanded, despite any earlier agreements. At first glance, it looks like Byrd’s is still in that location.

Recently, my mom asked me to write copy for an ad she was going to run in the local newspaper. I got the information on the ad size, and I asked exactly what she wanted to say.

She wanted to thank the customers, and at the same time she wanted her customers to know that the other restaurant was no longer affiliated with her Byrd’s. Originally, she wanted to state directly that the old second location was not Byrd’s, but I explained a better marketing strategy. After discussing the plan, which she agreed with, I wrote up the ad copy I thought would convey the concept she wanted to get across.

I wrote the text within the size restrictions, and told her to let the newspaper ad department put any graphic-artist touches on it they felt would work. I’ve worked with graphic artists many times, and I respect their abilities as much as I understand my limitations in that area. (Look at this site, for example: lots of text, very little graphic design.) I emailed the Word document to my mom, who forwarded it on to the newspaper ad department.

Here’s the text I wrote (within the actual size of the ad):

Here’s the ad as published (the discolored splotches are from the reverse side of the paper):

I think the ad turned out very nice. I didn’t see the graphic results until I saw the published ad. On my first read through, I noticed two errors.

The “G” in “best tenderloin & Gravy,” shouldn’t be capitalized. Looks like they retyped in my text; I wonder why they didn’t just copy and paste from the Word document? If they did copy and paste, how did that typo get introduced?

The Saturday hours say “6:00 am-11:00pm,” but it should be “11:00am.” (The restaurant closes before noon on Saturday.) Embarrassingly, this mistake was in my original document. Just goes to show, a writer needs an editor to at least proofread everything. I noticed this error immediately upon looking at the ad, but I never noticed it in the three drafts I wrote before sending it off.

The newspaper added the store phone number, probably at my mom’s request. That was a good idea — I should have thought of it.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com