My Talisman

After reading MoodyTunes, I just had to post about my own "talisman".

So when I was a kid, the magic for me, the thing that would turn my day into the best day ever.... was a Slim Jim. Yeah, I know it is hard to believe that a meat snack would make your day change like that, but it was the whole process, not just a piece of meat.

You see way back, when my father still lived in Gretna (a suburb of New Orleans) he lived next to a store. It was a glorified house, it took up no more space than a house would, and in fact the proprietor lived upstairs. It was a magical place all in itself. We called it the "little man's store" because the guy who ran it was short... and we are a family of gargantuans.

Anyway my absolute favorite thing to get was a Slim Jim, because my dad would ask "do you want a Slim Jim?" And when he did, I knew right where I was going, and I knew I was getting the super size one, not that crap you see for much less in the actual grocery store. Premium baby... nothing but the best!

Yeah there were times when I would opt for a Hubig's but that was when I usually had a Slim Jim in my other hand anyway. So my father would give me the money and I would run to the store... make my purchase... and delight in the Slim Jim on the walk home. Strange that my father never wanted to share in the Slim Jim goodness, but at least he got one for me. And my brother and sisters if they wanted something. So the walk, the store, the asking if I wanted something were all magical.

Thank you Mr. MoodyTunes for evoking something inside me to write about, now I wonder if I got a Slim Jim today if it would be as special as it was back then.



Here you can see all of us, that is us children, I'm the little one, the baby as it were. We are all happy, probably because my father just offered us a Slim Jim.