I was little. Maybe I was six or seven years old. I was running in and out of my front door,
for no particular reason, when on one of my trips back in, my bare foot and the
front door arrived simultaneously at the threshold. I don’t remember pain but I do remember
running back to the front lawn, dropping to the ground and watching the blood
running out of the middle toe on my left foot like water out of a hose. The door was likely slammed by the swamp
cooler and not my little brother Steve as I may have suggested years ago.
I also don’t
remember the doctor visit but I do remember my mom buying me a 100-pack of
little plastic cars at Cedar Drugs on Cedar and Clinton.
In a family where toys were rarely given outside of birthdays or
Christmas, getting something like that was a special treat. Maybe if it had been the big toe it would
have been a G.I. JOE.
The cars are long
gone; lost in, well in 100 difference places, likely before the end of summer
that year. The end of my toe was never
recovered and I doubt even looked for. Maybe
the dog took it. Cedar Drugs moved to
the building next door, and eventually closed for good. I’ll never see any of those cars or that
phantom toe part again, but in the course of my job I had the opportunity to
visit the Cedar Drugs building.
What I mostly
remember about that store are the high, mirrored windows at the back. When I was a kid, as I moved along the aisles
I imagined that behind those windows sat a stern-faced store detective, planted
ramrod straight in a stiff wooden chair, crew cut flecked with grey, a too
tight blazer buttoned over his belly, his eyes roaming from corner to corner, watching
and waiting for someone to slip something in a coat or pants pocket so he could
drop the cold hand of justice on his shoulder and say, “Come with me son.” I never shoplifted, maybe because of those
windows, so I never found out if my fears were justified. More likely there was some manager back there
sleepily going over the books and paying little attention to what was going on
below.
When I paid my
visit to what is now the Cedar Clinton branch of the Library I was tracing
phone cabling and that took me up to that office behind those windows. Inside I found a couple of tired desks, file
cabinets, and more than a little dust.
There were no remnants of security cameras and no wooden chair with arms
rubbed smooth from the ever vigilant blazer owner. And the entire place seemed much smaller than
when I was smaller.
In my few short
months working for the County I’ve visited the buildings that comprised the
skyline of my youth more than my entire 50 years before. In the old Del Webb Building I’ve been from
the basement, where strange machines wheeze and hiss like dragons sleeping in
deep dark caverns, to the 21st floor where wires and other cabling
hang as silent as vines in a green house.
I’ve visited the old Crocker
Bank Building
where there are so many coats of paint on the doors that the hinges seem to
melt into them, and the vault (pictured above) sits quiet and forever open, far
too big and heavy to ever move. I work behind the empty, former Juvenile Hall,
I’ve been to Sunnyside Bowl where the alleys have been covered by a vast cube
farm, and I’ve walked the halls of the Hall of Records with stainless steel and
brass art-deco finishes look at new as the day they were installed.
It’s a little sad
to see some of these buildings only continue to live on as government office
space. No one will ever roll a ball down
the alleys in Sunnyside again. No wealthy
travelers will ever check into the penthouse of the Del Webb Building with
views of both the Sierra Nevada and Coast
Range Mountains,
and the vault in the Crocker
Building holds boxes of
paper and broken down printers and obsolete fax machines instead of bundled and
stacked legal tender.
As to the library
occupying the former Cedar Drugs? As far
as I’m concerned you could put a library in ever other building from one end of
town to the other and I’d be okay with it.
If I ever lose a toe part from another foot, left or right, there are
other drugstores where I can get prescriptions.
As to the every seeing that 100-pack of cars? Not
so much.
There is probably more to that Steve theory than you might think. He has 100 toy cars in a box in his attic. Just saying.
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