Peddlers at the Manor

A short story by Keith Axberg

George rolled his cart up the hill from the town’s Main Street until he found a spot in front of The Manor.  It was just past eleven in the morning, and George was huffing and puffing to get there on time. As he rolled into view of the main doors of the Home, he could see the residents were already jockeying for position along the concrete pad.

Lucretia was first in line. She’s always first, thought George to himself. She must wend her way through the nursing home like Jeff Gordon at Daytona, he continued. He could see her in his mind’s eye, walker firmly in hand, rolling as speedily as nature and arthritis would allow, weaving between the slower patrons as they streamed toward the exit, seeking the best place in queue – the front.

You would think these folks never ate the way they hustled their way to the parking lot, but that’s just the way it was. I guess when I get to be that age, George mused, I’ll see every meal as my possible Last Supper, so I’ll want to hit it as quickly as possible, too.

Behind Lucretia, Annie and Marvin bickered about who should be next. They’d been married nearly seven decades, and every day it was the same thing: “I got here first, so I should be first,” spat Marvin to his nearly deaf wife. “Well, it’s ladies first, you ol’ poop!” she spat back. And on and on it would go like that until they got what they came for, and seconds later they would both be chomping away on the fresh, hot pretzels George dispensed with speed and good cheer.

George finally managed to get his cart up to its usual spot a few feet from Lucretia. He set the wheel blocks beneath the wheels fore and aft, raised the shade umbrella with the “George’s Fresh Hot Pretzels” sign spelled out clearly on the dangling fringe, and popped the folding counter up into place – Ready for business, he was, in about forty seconds flat. George looked at his watch and grunted, “I’m slowing down.”

He opened the Plexiglas door to his pretzel case and the aromatic flavor of his fresh hot pretzels wafted out into the warm breeze, and the queue began to drool. The queue; the whole darned line began to drool in unison as George sang out, “Pretzels! Fresh Hot Pretzels! Anyone in line looking for Fresh Hot Pretzels?”

Lucretia shuffled forward as quickly as legs and walker would allow. “I’ll have one,” she said through hungry, quivering lips. George gave her a big smile.

“Coming right up, darling,” he said, as he grabbed a big ol’ fluffy pretzel with his tongs, tucked it into a paper holder, and handed it to her in one fell swoop. “On the house! And have some mustard; salted pretzels are better when you slather on some of that real French mustard – Gray Poupon; none of that nuclear yellow stuff you had as a kid!”

Lucretia took the pretzel with the fancy mustard and put it in her mouth so she could steer her walker with both hands back into the Manor. The nurses smiled at the yellowish gray grin on Lucretia’s face, and on all the smiles that followed.

NO PEDDLING PERMITTED IN TOWN reads the sign as one enters the village, but that didn’t apply to George, for he never sold his famous Fresh Hot Pretzels at the Manor – he only peddled smiles, and there’s no law against that, ever.