Jon was the manager up front, When I would go, most Saturdays: Sh'Quan was the cashier I would choose Who knew the best, and quickest ways To ring up and to pack the food So it was easy to unpack: This place was crazy-busy, then, Fresh-bake on the right, fresh cut in the back. Jon now works at the tire store, He's a whole lot heavier (as am I); Sh'Quan, I think, must have moved away, As I just stopped seeing her, by-and-by. And I know these places come and go Like the squeak of a wheel on a shopping cart; But to be among ghosts of a grocery store Seems just a tad odd to this fading Heart
He told her there was someone else He wanted to be with. She told him that She was not surprised, and that Was almost true. She drove a long way Through the winter countryside, wondering What it was about her that no one Could seem to manage to love her; And cold tears fell, outside and in. She happened upon an abandoned barn in the snow With a faint sound of music coming from inside; That barn was me.
He told me about how just before he went in the Navy during WWII, he rode with his older brother in a train all the way from Georgia to California, passing through mountains and over canyons and valleys, and looking like something from a John Ford movie -- whoever he was. I asked him about what the trains were like and if they had men in hats who checked their tickets and the like, And he said that the food was amazing in the dining car and he and his brother met two sisters with strawberry blonde hair who were going west to start a new life away from their parents, and things happened on that train that never happened back home and did I ever date a girl with strawberry blonde hair? And I answered yes, but I had never ridden on a train or fought in a war, or gone across country like that, And he could only say that I would have hated the war, but loved the train and really loved those girls
