The Mall's "Women's Department"

A woman tosses a bag of maxi pads on the counter. Dressed in a wonderfully flattering, skimpy mini-skirt she is barely recognizable as the 50ish woman who used to clean my mom's home.

"Yes," she says vibrantly giggling. "Yes, I still menstruate."

She winks at an older woman in the store and just as I sense a private joke is being shared, they decide to let me in on it. The older woman swipes her hand through curly silver locks and spryly approaches the counter.

"Well..." I have grown to like this mature "granny" who at first seemed standoffish and grouchy. She raises puppies and she can laugh at herself - how can she be all that bad?!

"Well..." she repeated and gave a full explanation of the adventure her ovaries have been having. When she went, years ago, for a scheduled hysterectomy the specialist informed her that, after much search, her "female parts" were nowhere to be found.

"They've been taken out," the doctor assured her. When, she had wondered, had they been robbed? The only deduction seemed to be that while she was in the hospital after suffering a miscarriage her entire feminine innards must have been purged. Then, last year during some testing for cancer, two very distinctive "blobs" turned up on the xrays. "One is an ovary," she was told, "and the other its shadow."

"Can you just imagine?" she wondered aloud, a lilt of mirth peppering her tale. "So," she stated in finality as she gathered her newly purchased goods and stepped toward the door, "so I asked him, 'Hey Doc, how are those ovaries of mine?' and he told me, "wrinkled and shrivelled up just like they should be!'" With a gleeful chuckle she was gone, holding the door for the maxipad-hugging woman behind her.

The Start of the Holstein Mini-Series

Photo from "Seasonal Ontario Food" Blogspot

Affectionately known as "The Mall" by locals, the Holstein General Store, built and began in 1890 by Neil D. McKenzie, located on Lot 22 in the hamlet of Holstein, Ontario (about 200 people reside here) is the hub of life in this rural area. My parents bought the business in Nov 30 1999, on the cusp of the millennium (though sometimes by the feel of it you may think as you step inside that it was 1899 rather than a century later).

Dad's motto is "if we don't have it, you don't need it" and if, on the rare occasion that something isn't to be found in the store, we will try to uncover it from somewhere (a neighbour's barn? mom's garage?). Once, at about 2 am, a local telephoned mom and dad desperately seeking a sump pump as theirs had just exploded and gushing water was frantically filling their cellar. They didn't know who else to call??? Dad found him one, took it over, and installed it.

On Saturday mornings, at 7:45am, I roll into the store for a morning of work. Brushing aside the newspapers chucked around 3am on the front step so I can yank open the new steel door, I enter and angle towards first, the coffee maker (water dumped, button pushed, customers soon to arrive for bubbling hot liquid), second the light switch, and third the antiquated safe with whom I have a tumultuous relationship. Some days the sucker withstands kicks and unkind rebuffs before allowing access. (What was that film in which two kooky, suicidal dudes created a business where you could be videoed hurling your technological arch enemy over a cliff, and for a larger fee, see it explode and burn??? The safe, and our computer printer - who lovingly completes any job my husband gives it but jams up whenever I am near, for me, these two would be the disdainful objects I would gleefully launch.)

You may think I am merely a "clerk" (supposed to dust and vacuum and check out customers) but no, no, no....there are many more roles than just this that I play at The Mall. I am: source of information (though limited as we are a post office and so can not legally give specific details, such as home addresses or directions), police officer (or so the not-so-young man I caught stealing this morning would acknowledge), psychologist, lock-mouthed gossip-catcher (especially from the regular morning "coffee club" that knows all), and oh so many more...

Follow along with me on my "Holstein Mini-Series"...