How May I Serve You

    It was the early 1970s and I was in grade school and lived in a rowhouse across from the plant.  Our street was narrow and had railroad tracks running down the center, the tracks in grooves in the pavement.  The trains went slowly along the street, shuttling between the plant and the warehouses on the other side of town.
    Behind our house was a cinder and gravel lot with a basketball hoop mounted on a wooden pole and with a wooden backboard, no net, and I’d come home from school and change my clothes and go out and shoot baskets and sometimes Roger would come over and shoot with me.
    Roger was in high school and was going with Patty, the cutie who lived in the other half of our house.  Roger didn’t play sports in school and all the guys on the football team wanted to be his friend.  Roger drove a blue Duster and was tall and rangy, like a cowboy in his tight jeans and pointed boots and he was meticulous about his hair.  It was long, not hippy long, but a man’s long.  He kept it slicked up and was always running his palms gently along the sides, smoothing it front to back and I remember once we were eating supper and my mom laughed and wondered did Roger ever let Patty run her fingers through his hair.
    Roger never said much when he came over to shoot.  I’m not even sure he knew my name.  He didn’t hog the ball like most of the older boys.  I’d shoot a few and he’d get my rebounds, he’d shoot and I’d get his and we never played 1 on 1 or horse or around the world.  We’d just shoot and when Roger’d had enough, he’d go back inside.
    I didn’t see much of Roger after he and Patty graduated and we moved away and 30 years later I was back, visiting, and in 1 of those box stores out along the highway, there was no downtown shopping anymore, and I saw Roger coming toward me.  I knew him immediately.  He had a paunch and was balding in the front but still had his cowboy look, the long legs and tight jeans and as if to verify he was Roger, he touched the sides of his hair, gently.  I made eye contact with him and thought there was recognition and if there was, he didn’t acknowledge it and after he went past I turned and read the back of his vest:  HOW MAY I SERVE YOU.