Generalities
by Dianna Wray, September 2007

DENTON, TX - He is a tall lanky man, moving across the student union in the light blue shirts and navy pants synonymous with the role of maintenance in America. He smiles at anyone that meets his eye, and pauses from whatever he's doing to greet any friend, and anyone who knows him approaches as a friend. He stands a good head above the average person, his black hair with only a few specks of grey combed and neatly parted and his eyes snapping and sparkling behind the glasses that the ageing process has made necessary. His deeply tanned skin is like well worn, well loved leather, folding into deep creases and crinkles when he smiles. He seems like he could be almost any age from forty to sixty five but it's impossible to guess. In this modern age people take a lack of cordiality for granted. A gregarious person is memorable because they seem to be on society's endangered list; a species too vulnerable, too inviting for confrontation and attack to get buy in this day and age where eye contact is a threat and a smile mean you are asking for trouble. Keith Brewer was born in Forestburg, Texas, the first generation born in this state and the first of his family to be delivered in a hospital. His full name is Rex Keith Brewer, after his father's best friend, and his mother sore that if he would have had a sound biblical name, like his brothers, Paul and David, if he had been born at home, but she was too drugged at the hospital too care. His family has been traced as far back as Scottsboro Alabama, where they resided during the Civil War. Efforts to look back any farther than that have proved difficult; Scottsboro fell in the path of Sherman's March and the family records were lost. His grandparents and great grandparents were farmers but his father and mother disliked the agricultural life and made their living running a Laundromat. Keith graduated from high school and studied accounting and psychology for a year at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls Texas before he quit to get married and go into truck driving. However this profession necessitated long hours, days and week away from his wife and young son despite the good pay. He kept his eye out for other opportunities. Keith had worked in a general store in his junior high and high school days and enjoyed it. When the opportunity came to purchase a general store he jumped right in. He ran the general store for twenty years supplying his customers with groceries, gasoline, feed, hardware and whatever else they might need in the way of purchasable goods. He liked the work. It's easy to imagine him standing behind the counter, in a button down shirt with arm bands, a bow tie and suspenders or overalls and a piece of grass to chew on depending upon which cinematic cliché you subscribe too. Everyone knows everyone else and their children and grandchildren as well. Every morning six to ten old men wander in to have their coffee and see who can tell the biggest lies. These kinds of stores hover on the doorstep of extinction; I myself have never seen nor set foot in one. But the store in Forestburg remains to this day a successful institution, doubtlessly aided by the fact that the nearest Wal-Mart or Kroger's is at least thirty miles away. In this day and age of the worker bee, the drone, and the office worker going to and from the hive, ant hill or cubicle many hunger for freedom from the tyranny of being a mere cog in the corporate machine. Many dream of just what Mr. Brewer had- the self determination and self reliance of an independent business. Behind the counter of his store, Keith longed for the security of being just another employee. He couldn't find reliable help for the store thus he worked twelve to thirteen hours a day, six days a week. I f he took a day off or took his family on vacation, he was losing money. If the store wasn't doing well, he was the direct sufferer. Again he began to cast around for a different way of making a living. Along the way he and his wife divorced, his son went to college and became a high school football coach and he and his second wife undertook the raising of his granddaughter, Sarah.

Continue reading:
1 | 2

alarana.net | 2009 | Houston, TX