Driving through the gentle and open-armed Shenandoah Valley, we stopped at a small country store because of the sign’s promise of hoop cheese and real ham biscuits. There was some minor construction going on at one end of the store – actually, it was ‘de-construction’ of a sort – the old man who owned the store explained that he had decided to pull off the siding which he put up in the 1950s to ‘modernize’ the store by covering up the original log cabin architecture which dated to the mid-1800’s. The store had been in the family that long . . .
He didn’t talk about a son or grandson or anyone else taking over the store in the future; he worked alone along the quiet highway with his hoop cheeses and real sorghum molasses, his jars of everything that could be pickled or canned by the nearby Amish women, his bushel baskets of seasonal produce the earth brought forth from nearby Fancy Hill, VA., and his tables full of smoked hams. His pink aged face was alive with plans for the ‘re-modernization’ of his family store – back to the old log cabin work of his ancestors . . . still full of plans. He said something like that as he cut a wedge of hoop cheese for me, “As long as I’ve still got plans, I figure I’ll never get old.”
All the while he talked, I looked at the table of hams behind me, the hoop cheeses in the background. What voice inside me whispered, starry night? Suddenly I saw Van Gogh’s famous painting in a table full of hams and hoop cheeses – but the painting had turned pink and red and cheddar instead of blue and green and summery. If I were a painter – and I wish I were, for there are times when words are tiresome and harsh – I would get out my palette of pinks and lavender-reds and browns, moss greens and silver-greys. . . and I’d paint a table full of swirling hams and call it “Starry Starry Plans.”
