My post about A GOOD APPROACH reminded me of Charlie Brightbill. At the time my grade school career started, Charlie Brightbill ran a little eating joint on the busiest intersection of our small town. My ten-years-older-than-me brother, Val, and his high school buddies hung out there a lot. My dad had taken me in there several times.
Charlie had a nonending pot of chili (for putting on hot dogs) which probably never was turned off and was washed about as often. When the greasy goo got so low Charlie, to my way of thinking, just added more ingredients.

Even today, my brother would say, "Charlie made the best hot dogs I ever ate." Just now, the writing of this brings to mind the mess of chili and finely chopped onions oozing out of the bun. You either had to lean over to eat them or not care how much you got on you.

My favorite thing about Charlie was his malts. He kept his milk in the ice cream box and it was in a slushy state when he poured it in the big chrome cup to make malts. He'd scoop enough ice cream in to make sure the resulting mix wouldn't spill out of a turned over cup. He seemed to know just how long to leave the shiny cup in the mixer with the pale green painted motor.

Charlie had an older-than-heck hand lettered sign one the wall saying, Ice Cream 5 cents a scoop. One day before lunch (I was about 8 or 9 years old) Val took me into Charlie's. There were several of Val's cronies standing around when I ordered a dime cone. Charlie took his scoop and just curled the ice cream up in a ball with a hole in the middle and handed it to me and asked for his dime. All ears were on us when I pointed to the sign and demanded my other scoop of ice cream. Flustered, he curled up another scoop and stuck onto the first one. When my first bite revealed the hole in the scoop of cream I looked up at Charlie and said, "Charlie, you cheenchy old _____________." The place rocked for a few minutes.

By my fifth grade year Charlie closed his place and became the janitor in our building. A bunch of us onery kids would walk up town at lunch and after school and swipe kite string and other small items. One day after lunch Charlie called me into his "office" filled with brooms, mops, buckets and other cleaning supplies and tools. He dropped a bomb on me, "Your teacher said she heard that you boys were stealing things up town. I told her, "No ma'am. I've known Abe and his family for years. I can't believe he'd do such a thing." He was right, never again.

The thing about it was that Charlie cared enough to address it to me rather than calling my parents and making a scene. I've always appreciated him for that. Maybe we should all take a lesson from that and give other kids a break and encourage them to walk the straight and narrow path.