If We Don't Have It, You Don't Need It

Pronto & the Lone Stranger

by Spike Gillespie

photograph by Bruce Dye

Throughout my childhood summers in the late Sixties and early Seventies, every single weekend plus two glorious weeks each year were spent at the Jersey shore. There we had a house built of used lumber and sheetrock on a little island called West Wildwood, just down the street from my very first corner store. The owners were cranky, suspicious of children, and more than a little dysfunctional (years later, their son would murder his own children.) But there were no other options on that island. And despite the glares netted for merely crossing the store's threshold sans adult, I still begged permission to go solo to buy a nickel Hershey's bar or pick up the evening paper for Daddy.

photograph by Bruce Dye

Better still were those times when one of the teenage Reed boys - Charlie and Edna Reed had seven sons and their own summer place right across the street - would lift me, just 7 or 8, and piggyback me down to the corner and buy me a little bag of penny candy, those chewy red Swedish fish being my very favorite.

Perhaps it was imprinting - I never stopped being fascinated by corner stores. And my son, now seven, shares the sentiment. Last year, the first time we moved (we moved three times), one of his biggest regrets was that we'd no longer daily traipse to the market a stone's throw from our old apartment. Sure it was sleazy, and the prices exorbitant, but we came to know the various workers who greeted us kindly. Certain rituals were lost when we left.

Dumb luck brought us, on our first move, to Hyde Park, where again we were fortunate enough to find ourselves situated spitting distance from yet another convenience store. Pronto, at the corner of 43rd & Duval cheered us as we adjusted to our new digs, to a neighborhood attitude not unpleasant but certainly different than that in South Austin.

We started new rituals, some of them less healthy than others. Henry often indulged in the summertime special - 25cents ice cream sandwiches, while I, on the other hand, was distracted by their other stock. There I would stand, in the middle of Pronto - roughly the size of a small, one-bedroom apartment - and gaze with awe and longing at what had to be 60 bazillion brands of beer.

I could not blame this impressive selection, however, for my return to drinking after nearly a year of abstinence. Many other things in my life could take credit for that (like a protracted book rewrite and stubborn depression, for example.) I'd buy my beers - sometimes Shiner, sometimes Bass - a bottle or two at a time, sometimes much more and much earlier than I really should've. Occasionally, I'd go for a Harp or an Anchor Steam. At least I paced myself. The alcohol usually cheered me, but not nearly as much as the people who rang up my order on the way out.

The folks who work at Pronto, you see, are an odd lot. "Odd," in my book, is an adjective of high praise. The women who works Pronto's early morning shift, for example, despite the pre-dawn demands of the gig, never forgot my brand of smokes and always laughed politely as I stumbled to the coffee pot. No doubt they saw hundreds like me daily, all of us a mess prior to that morning shot of caffeine.

Afternoons, Elliot entertained me, never chiding me for my mid-day beer cravings, nor the fact that sometimes I'd return a mere half hour later (and sometimes again another half hour later, and sometimes, even again after that.)

"You really ought to set up a tip jar," I told him. "I like to pretend you guys are bartenders."

Jason, the kind of guy who could flirt with a 900-pound, 80-year-old woman and make her feel like Marilyn Monroe, worked Thursday nights. Regardless of my attire (typically boxer shorts and sweaty jog bra), and further regardless of our age difference (not once did he call me "Mrs. Robinson"), Jason would act like he was drinking in the very vision of beauty as he waited on me, often suggesting he might just have to swing by after work one of these nights (both of us giggling - he had no idea where I lived).

Then there was Todd, with his Noam Chomsky and peculiar taste in music - explaining to the inquisitive that we were listening to alternative French tunes or, as he preferred, "Frog Prog." Or his co-worker, Stapp, quiet and calm as a placid sea.

I often wondered if they thought me the neighborhood nutcase, showing up as I did sometimes six times a day. "Doesn't this lady have a life?" was what I imagined they must think.

Greg at Pronto photograph by Bruce Dye

"You do understand," I explained to them, more than once, "That I work alone and you are not merely cashiers to me. You, my friends, are my surrogate co-workers." Some responded kindly, the others just handed me my change.

More than once I'd be hit with a smartass remark. Writing a check, one of my first nights in Pronto, I asked the 20-year-old behind the counter if he wanted to "see my picture."

"Depends," came the answer, "Are ya naked?"

The feminist in me couldn't muster up offense. I giggled. "Wait," I protested, "If I am naked, would you want to see it or not?"

"Oh yes!" he said.

God bless that man-child.

Upon nearing the completion of draft two of my book, I trotted over for a celebratory bottle of Chimay, the champagne of beers, gift of the Belgian monks to us mere mortals. I couldn't contain myself. I shouted at Elliot, "Hey! I only have one chapter left to go in my book!!"

Elliot, deadpan, inquired, "Oh, are you reading or writing?"

And then, on the eve of Henry's first day of first grade, I crawled into bed, tossing and turning with anxiety for the child, who was sound asleep and worry-free. Insomnia had haunted me that summer and I could not afford another night of no sleep. I sprinted over to Pronto to pick up a beer, just one, in hopes it would calm me.

photograph by Bruce Dye

"It's the night before first grade!" I announced, as my dollar was collected. The cashier waited. He tucked my bottle in a tiny brown bag. And as I headed for the door, he said, "Well, make sure you don't hit anybody."

These days, when Henry and I are in the area, we still swing by Pronto. They still treat us like family. One night Greg asks what's going on and I announce, nervously, that I have a date. The next time I see him, he won't forget to ask how it went. ("A keeper," I'll beam, as he high fives me.)

Am I silly to count as extended family a gaggle of corner store employees whose names I cannot always recall or keep straight? Hardly. As the supermarkets grow to super-supermarkets and all the "good old days" sentiments give way to a city growing out of bounds, becoming a metropolis of too many strangers, it comforts me to know that, when I need a laugh or familiar hello, I can just head over to my beloved Pronto.

"If we don't have it," says their T-shirt, "You don't need it."

No kidding.