Knoxville Skull & Coffee Boots

I've been thinking about my childhood lately, and it has recently occurred to me that while I didn't know it at the time, one of my fondest memories was time spent at my Aunt June's beach cabin, near Yachats on the Oregon Coast. Technically she was my great-aunt, but we always just called her Aunt June. Located on a flag lot, it was a cozy one bedroom bungalow with a driveway lined on one side by a row of huckleberries, in what can best be described as a mini-hamlet by the name of Knoxville. Essentially just a small neighborhood of similar cabins on three or four unpaved streets, nestled between Highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean with a small patch of gnarled woods to the South, and a nondescript thicket to the North. When I was very young, probably 4 or so, Aunt June took me for a walk to the market on the other side of the woods, a fascinating adventure at the time, with a tinge of danger, as I was assaulted by a chipmunk. Well, actually, there was a chipmunk in one of the trees chattering at us as we passed by, and at that very instant something sharp poked through the sole of my flip-flop and jabbed my foot a little bit. I was thoroughly convinced that somehow the angry chipmunk had thrown something at me, or was otherwise responsible for the poking of my foot. The rest of the journey is rather hazy, except that she—Aunt June, not the chipmunk—bought me a butterscotch Rocky Road candy bar, a flavor which I don't believe they even make anymore.

See? This is why I don't write very often, because I'm easily side tracked by things like surly chipmunks and extinct candy bars. What I started to say, was that on the corner of 101 and Aunt June's street, there was a sagging two-story house, sided with weather beaten shingles and on the Southeast corner, a big blue sign with red lettering and white outlines that read vertically: Knoxville, and this is a sketch of it from memory. I believe the house is still standing but the sign is gone, and sadly, the house has been refurbished to the point that all of its character is gone. The rest of the sketches are just stuff that floated into my head, and the bottom one is of some lady with unpleasant boots who was waiting for coffee.

Knoxville Skull.

Coffee Boots.