Summit Wellness: Gratitude - "The Pleasant Think"
By Matt Anthony - Summit FM Digital Media Specialist
A worn brick alley in Annapolis. Paint weathered and removed over time on the railing of a stairwell in St. Louis. Or the scuffed and grooved surface of a check-out counter in an old convenience store here in Akron.
These timeless tales, and the stories they could tell, have always intrigued me, long before it was considered ‘contemporary’ to have exposed brick or ductwork in a loft or a chic eatery.
When I was a teenager (and when the owner, Dick Koller, wasn’t looking, I would run my hand gently over the counter at Cottage Market, on Fulton Road. The edge of my palm sliding across it, like ice. I wondered how many small grocery items had slid across it, who bought them, and what was their purpose.
Several years ago, while at the Canton Brewing Company, I left briefly to go downstairs to the restroom. A modern speakeasy graced it then, along with posh restrooms and brewing equipment. The basement was once a major retail section of the old McCrory’s store. I stood for a moment, watching couples swig pale ales. On the walls, to the left, were enlarged photos of what was once in this space, photos from the 30s and 40s. I suddenly wished that the owners had left some of the history intact.
When I would ride the city bus as a teenager, I imagined who once sat in the seat that I was sitting in. Was it a mother taking a child shopping for school clothes? A struggling husband traveling across town to a second job? A businessman skipping his stop, preferring to stay on the bus so that he didn’t have to arrive home to share the news with his family about the results of the medical report he’d received earlier that day?
My trips to New York, for instance, have been filled with, yes, all the sights and sounds that New York City can offer. But I was entranced just as much with the stoop in front of the brownstone in Brooklyn, trying to imagine who sat there during a hot July day during the war in 1942. During the Summer of Love of 1969. Or during a gentle drizzle on an uneventful Sunday afternoon in September in 1980 as the Mets played on the radio.
While on our only trip to Europe, we spent our last two days in London. The first afternoon, Donna and I walked around, resembling every bit the American tourist, each with a hand holding on to an outstretched map and trying to work our way around the city. Not sure if we were looking at the Royal Opera House in the distance, we came upon an elderly gentleman, looking quite distinguished with his long coat, cane, and beret.
“Excuse me,” interrupted Donna, “but that building to the left, in the distance. Is that the Opera House?”
He walked towards us. “Why, yes, it is,” he responded. Then he pointed out various buildings and landmarks, suddenly making our cheap map relatively useless.
We walked together for several blocks, where he turned into a personal tour guide. It was one of the highlights of the whole trip! He deftly explained details about streets, government structures, and museums, almost as if he were hired to do so. Finally, at one intersection, we stopped.
“And here,” he said, “is where Benjamin Disraeli made a very public pronouncement that caused much controversy during his time.” We all paused to take it all in, and suddenly Donna said, “Wow. Just think of all the famous people who have walked on this street.”
Our tour-guide looked at us, thought for a moment, and replied, “That is quite the pleasant ‘think’, now isn’t it!”
And he said in such a perfectly, blissfully British way that all three of us, right there on the second day of January in 1989, where Benjamin Disraeli once spoke, laughed out loud like hyenas.
I thought of that trip this past Fall when we made our annual pilgrimage to Thomas, West Virginia. Thomas is my parents’ hometown, and on my list of things to do was a visit to the old B & L store. My grandparents shopped there, and my parents told many stories about it. That store is gone, and so, sadly, are my parents. Today, it’s been wonderfully refurbished as The Buxton and Landstreet Gallery and Studios.
We encountered many gorgeous paintings and pieces in this gallery, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the floor. I bent down and touched it. I wondered how many times my father and mother, as children and as teenagers, had walked across this floor. Were some of those scuffmarks and worn groove-patterns made by their shoes or boots?
Just think, I thought as I walked across it, I could be walking on the same floor that they walked on. And that turned out to be quite the pleasant ‘think’.