Loafers

 I’ve told you that my paternal grandparents owned a big general store in Cayuga.  My maternal grandparents also owned a small grocery store in Utica.   The thing I remember most about it is the bench out front.   Everyone called it the “Loafers Bench”.

 Every day two or three old men would sit on the bench and smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco and talk.  Now and then they’d go in the store and get a drink or more tobacco.  But mainly they’d just talk and solve the world’s problems.

There was Mr. Carmichael, Mr. Ford, and  my great Uncles Carl and Percy.  Carl was my grandmother’s brother and Percy was my grandfather’s brother.  For as long as I remember, neither of them worked.  I never figured out how they survived.  My mother said that for her entire childhood, until she got married and moved out, either Carl or Percy, or sometimes both, lived with them.  I think Carl got some sort of disability check from the army.  He may have been in WWI, and Daddy said Carl sold shoes for some mail order shoe store for a while. Carl loved to hunt and fish. In fact he died of hypothermia while duck hunting. Percy, on the other hand, never did anything that I’m aware of. Apparently my grandfather took care of him. For the longest time he was the town drunk, and if I remember right, he wasn’t a pleasant drunk. He died in the state mental hospital where my grandfather took him to sober up.  Mr Carmichael was retired from the county road crew.  I think Mr. Ford had some cattle and hogs.  But Carl and Percy were professional loafers.  

But they weren’t the only loafers in town.  There was a group that hung out on the railroad bridge on Main Street. Some more hung out at the domino parlor in “The Bottom”, the seedier part of town.  My father said it always puzzled him how so many grown men, some with families, never worked.  He also said there were some desperately poor families around.   

Back then it was older men, and for the most part, they were harmless. They were usually friendly and loved to talk with anyone passing by. Now the loafers are young men.  Some selling drugs, most are up to no good. Times change.  And not always for the better.