Used To Be's

Standing across the road from the church where I was confirmed; a teen Blue jean jacket and jeans, Converses, I felt pretty cool with a pack of Marlboro reds in my pocket, blue tip matches.. It was time away from tending the flock of sheep back home, and my regular after school job supported my later habit. Perhaps I wasn't that bad, seems as though I was not getting caught smoking in the bathroom. Deep in those Appalachian hills I wondered at times as the rain would come, I would grab my old jacket to take a walk. Funny how that warm summer rain was the ailment, my mother in a distance calling me back in, and my: "I'm fine Mom... Just taking a walk". Farm life was not hard, not so much a lady until later years. It was the eighties, Finding myself on those sleepy little streets of the Village, where they roll up the side walks at five pm, and every once in awhile, when I felt the coolest of my cool, all by myself, I'd take a Marlboro out of my jacket, strike a blue tip off my zipper and toss it. The farm got foreclosed on in my adulthood, no lambs play king of the mountain, butting each other off the huge stump in the rock in the pasture. I walked back to that sleepy little Village when I came back not long ago, My blue jean jacket and jeans, converses, Marlboros and blue tips.... The village was a ghost town, nothing open but a pharmacy that had opened thirty years ago it was a store in a bank building that Bonnie and Clyde hit, and closed it on down. I was rather amused with the vault open, storing two liters of Pepsi there, browsing at the sunglasses too long with the elderly working, I was asked if I was going to buy something. I said well, you took out the fountain coke machine, so I guess not, I walked outside the door, lit a cigarette with my blue tip, and slowly walked down the side walk, the sun set different, shadows fading Of used to be's, they never mattered to me really....