Monday, November 30, 2015

Waiting for an Oil Change

Oh, but it is dirty!
-- this little filling station, 

Elizabeth Bishop's poem begins; that image followed by this:

oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over all
black translucency.

Certainly, the filling station where I sat this morning, though dirty, is not "oil-permeated" so much as "dust-bunnied" (like every other place in Sewanee). 

Fortunately, the owner -- and his wife and daughter (who used to work with him) -- decorated with personal tchotchkes that provide distraction: wooden filling station birdhouse hanging in a front window, a "My dad's garage" sign hanging beyond the counter, a wicker pig holding customers' free gas entries, and, encased with some car accessories, a collectible copper tow-truck.



It appears that Bishop's concluding line, "Somebody loves us all," applies. 

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