Well half the Calame family and lots of friends got to enjoy the South Texas heat this weekend, helping my brother and soon-to-be sister paint the old Calame Store. They are fixing it up and hope to re-open it sometime soon. I watched both of the family babies while my sister and daughter went to help paint. My daughter came back with plenty of paint on her. I’m not sure how much paint she put on the walls, but her clothes got painted pretty good.
I went into the store later to help clean up the old store counters, which sure bring back memories. They have wooden tops with that old orange color on the bottom….I can remember standing at that counter many days begging my daddy to buy a “Weekly Grand” lotto ticket, which I loved to help scratch, and I know I bought a whole lot of Big Red and Snickers from that store.
We lived just down the road from Calame Store as we grew up. We had a little brown and white Shetland paint pony named Rainbow, and daddy would put me and my sister Brittany on him, and lead us down to Calame Store to get goodies every weekend. One time, dad recalls, he turned around and saw Brittany hanging upside down from the pony. When we got to the store, Mr. George Pruitt would be standing there, leaning on the counter drinking hot coffee, and my sister would hide behind daddy’s legs because Mr. Pruitt was always teasing Brittany about her pretty red boots.
“Those boots are sure pretty,” he’d say, “I’m gonna steal those boots someday. Do you think they’ll fit me?”
Now me and Brittany both have our own little kiddos, and I still have that pair of pretty red cowboy boots. I wonder if little Audrey or Tucker will wear those boots and find themselves hiding from friendly Mr. George Pruitt someday soon.