(Originally published on Medium)

POLLY PEACHTREE SPICY

In the late 1970’s I was in my late teens and I got a job working with a guy I’ll call “T”, who wanted to open an old fashioned hardware store. This was at the dawn of the DIY big-box stores that we know today.

T’s dream was a hardware store where the employees know where everything is, no matter how exotic or obscure, because they had put it there. These kinds of stores still exist and are worth patronizing. There’s always at least one person who has handled every screw produced since the Iron Age and knows that the one you want is on aisle 8 about halfway down on the left, three shelves up.

The store T & I opened was perfect. He’d gotten the lease on a pre 1900’s building right near the town square that was literally untouched inside since about 1947. When we first unlocked the door, there was junk scattered everywhere. It looked to have been a smallish warehouse of some sort, all exposed brick and wood. It took us several months to clean up, do repairs, put in shelving and stock our inventory. We ended up with a store that really was a classic hardware store. Not some cutesy Cracker Barrel version, but a place George Bailey could’ve hung out in.

People did and still do hang out in such places, and not just hardware stores. Auto parts, appliance parts, heating and air suppliers: all of these businesses attract followers, mostly men, who have worked in related fields. If you walk into any kind of parts business and see a counter with stools in front of it, well? Come on in! Let’s talk tee-joints!

Our store had its regulars. Many of them were older men who had been around town since WWII and before. Sometimes they wanted a nut or a bolt, but more often, they just wanted a chin-wag.

Some came by for other reasons. One was a tall, corpulent man with cauliflower ears probably in his late sixties who worked collecting parking fees in a lot just down the sidewalk from our store. At least once a day “Cauliflower” would lumber up the small hill and appear at our door, out of breath.

“Ho, Ken!” he would bellow at T (whose name was NOT Ken), “How you today?”

“Fine, you?” “Ken” would reply.

“Fine, Fine! Ken, can I use your phone?”

Cauliflower had no phone in his ticket booth so he did this every day. T and I would walk off to give him privacy. He never seemed aware of my presence. Either way, he didn’t have a name for me, even a wrong one.

One day, though, T was out and I was alone in the front of the store. Cauliflower entered and looked around furtively.

“Where’s Ken?” he asked nervously, apparently fearing that T’s absence voided his phone privileges.

“He’s not here. Can I help you?” I replied.  And then, magically, he saw a 17 year old boy behind the counter.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, son, can I use the phone?”

As I moved away from the counter, Cuppy, a short bald man in coveralls, bounced through the door. He addressed me:

“Hey, little buddy, whut’s goin’ on? Listen, I need a box of them 1/2 inch copper- well, HEY, Masked Marvel, didn’t see you over there!”

Cauliflower waved offhandedly. He went back to his muffled phone call with- whom? Bookie, bootlegger, mother, sweetheart? I never did find out.

“Cuppy, did you call him ‘Masked Marvel’?” I asked.

“Aw, hell, you don’t know? He was a rassler back years ago, and that was his rasslin‘ name. He wudn’t the famous Masked Marvel, but he used that name. Yep, he was on tv for a while on Live Atlanta Wrestling. How you think he got them ears?”

Every day afterwards, when he lurched into the store, I’d greet him with a hearty “Hey, Masked Marvel! The phone’s right there!” I figured he’d earned his permanent phone privileges.

There weren’t many public toilets in the town square, so T usually let the regular customers use ours. Situated behind our front counter, one had to walk around and past us to get to it. Eventually I took T’s gesture, in my own flawless teenage wisdom, to be in the spirit of allemansrätten and began allowing access to anyone who entered and asked to enjoy our facilities.

Shortly after opening one morning, a particularly ripe fellow shambled up to the counter with a look of serious need on his face. “Hey, buddy, can I use y’all’s bathroom?” he slurred. “Sure!” I cried, in my misbegotten generosity, “it’s right back here!” As he rushed past me, a wave of odors wrapped me up like a diseased tarp. I whirled away, choking. He would have been notable even amongst medieval villagers, who likely would’ve called him “the stinking one”. Oddly though, besides the bouquet of personal filth he radiated, there was another, almost sweet smell that trailed in his wake.

“Murray!” T yelled at me from across the store. T was unhappy. “Don’t let every bum that walks in use the bathroom! It’s for customers only!” I don’t remember my response, but I can promise that it would’ve been some self-important “power to the people” retort because I was a very mouthy 17 year-old nitwit. 1970’s, man.

It took this particular fellow a long time to exit our toilet. I mean a long time. T and I occupied ourselves in other parts of the store far away from the front for several hours after our guest left, glaring at each other occasionally.

Some weeks after, I walked to the main square to get some lunch. McLellan’s dime store had a lunch counter and a pretty good chicken salad sandwich. After finishing, I decided to leave through the side entrance and take the back alley to the hardware store. For generations, this alley had been a hot spot for sodden after-hours debauchery by the less inhibited citizens of the town. They’d head in there after dark, favorite tipple in hand, and let the evening take them where it might.

As I was exiting McLellan’s side door, I noticed a shelf along the wall with a row of white plastic bottles. In plain letters around the top of these bottles were the words “Polly Peachtree Aftershave Lotion”. Around the bottom of each bottle, also in plain type, was the warning: “Not for internal consumption.” Polly Peachtree was available in two scents: “Regular“ and “Spicy”. “Spicy”? Wasn’t that more of an adjective for taste?  I wasn’t the aftershave type, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing such products described as flavors rather than scents. I mean, I never saw Jade East Chocolate or English Leather Peppermint.

Puzzled, I wandered out the door and into the alley. Like many alleys, this one was dark even in daylight, and was home to creatures such as rats and the occasional reveler still sleeping one off, so I proceeded slowly. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I looked around, making sure I wasn’t stepping on a snake or a sleeping drunk. Suddenly, something brought me up short. Scattered amongst a pile of Thunderbird and Night Train empties were several white plastic bottles. I walked closer and nudged one with my foot, leaning down to examine the name on the bottle. Polly Peachtree. Spicy!

An epiphany! Some of these folks were drinking 25¢ bottles of “aftershave”. And their bootlegger was McLellan’s, only a couple of yards away. This explained the Regular and Spicy flavors: regular for the more conservative and restrained, spicy for the risk-taking and devil-may-care. The warning against internal consumption? Not a warning. It was an invitation!

Backing away, I wondered: could this be true or was I just fitting convenient elements to my own narrative. Then, I saw it. Glittering as if in mocking validation, was an empty bottle of Aqua Velva. Clearly, some bon vivant had more discerning tastes.

As I made my way back to the hardware store, my brain pulsing with new insights, the most profound one yet struck me. This stuff, this dime store hooch posing as cologne, this was what our early morning inebriate smelled of when he first entered the store several weeks before. Polly Peachtree Aftershave. But not just Polly Peachtree. Polly Peachtree Spicy.

That madcap!