I'd like a bottle of ketchup please.

You’ll have to understand that I had two brothers, five and ten years older respectively.  Both were excellent students even as gradeschoolers.  Both graduated valedictorian of their classes.  So as a wee child I felt a lot of pressure to be smart. 

“Smart” takes on a certain simplicity of definition when you’re 7.  I didn’t know to take into account that of course they were considerably ahead of me scholastically; I only knew they seemed to have all the answers.  Having the right answers made you smart, and it’s a good thing to be smart, and thus having the wrong answers made you a bad boy.

So there’s the setting, the background that will help you understand this story of one day when I walked into the House of Steaks truck stop looking to buy a coke.

Perhaps I was distracted, I don’t know.  Why did I ask Musa for a bottle of ketchup?  I don’t know, I tell you, but I did.  This could have been laughed off easily had it not occurred in my world of inexcusable errors.  I had just ordered a bottle of ketchup, and I saw only one way out.

“Don’t you mean Coke, Ronnie?  I know how you like Coke.”

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“No, Ma’am Mrs. Hanson.  Today I just feel like a bottle of ketchup.”

“Ohhhh–kayy.”

“Everett”, she said to the cook back behind the heat lamps, “put down that spatula and get us a fresh bottle of ketchup here.”

“We just filled all the bottles.  What do we need another out for?”

“Ronnie wants a bottle of ketchup.”

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“That one right there on the counter is three-quarters full.”

“Would you just get me a bottle of ketchup?  Mr. Hanson?”

“Sounds mighty fishy to me.”

He produced a fresh bottle of ketchup, a nice brand new one, not one with a faded label that had been refilled a dozen times.  Back then it was common to just refill ketchup bottles with bulk ketchup, and you didn’t want the label to come off.  Washing it would make the label come off.  The Del Monte brand was associated with quality.  This is not saying anything about the House of Steaks.  It was standard practice for all restaurants of the day simply refilled the bottles until the label got squirrelly.

You don’t want people to think they’re eating Food Club ketchup (even if they are).

There it was, a full bottle of the good stuff, sitting on the counter in front of me.  Everett peered through the heat lamps.  He was starting to get it now.  I screwed off the lid and chugged it as best I could.  Of course, I had to tip it and shake it and tap on the bottom with the heel of my palm, but it came out and I hammered down all but about 20 percent of it before lowering it to the Formica.

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“You got a little left there,” said Musa.  She approved.  I could tell because she was starting to smile.  “Sure you don’t want that last bit.”

“No, Ma’am.  I’m all done.”

“Hey, now you finish that!  I’ll have to throw that bottle away now that everyone saw you drink out of it,” said Everett.  

Everett was tough as nails.  They say he used to walk to work, from downtown Ouray all the way up Horsethief Trail - three miles – 2,000 feet up - to the Bright Diamond mine every day, and it wasn’t some office job he did.  Hand-mucking, I hear.

“No, thank you sir, I’d rather nn . . . How much do I owe you, Mrs. Hanson?”

“Ten cents.  Same as always.”

To my right there were a couple of men I didn’t know, truckers probably.  As I fished in my pocket for a quarter, one said to the other, “Did you see that?”  I glanced their way and the other guy was shaking his head.  I guess he didn’t see it.  I was relieved.

She rang it up and gave me back fifteen cents.

 “Hey, one of those new dimes, Ronnie.  See, it has copper inside.  You should go put that in your coin collection.

“Thank you Mrs. Hanson.   I will.”

I didn’t feel so good, and I headed for the door.

Everett said something to the effect of, “Hey, I’m not kidding now!  You get back here and finish that . . . that . . . yee! . . . (snort)”.

“Oh, let him be,” she said, her voice wavering just a little.  She had a big smile.

See?  I didn’t make mistakes.   I was a good boy.  A smart kid.  Yes, I was.