Not much remains on Main Street Sheldon nowadays to remind me of the old days. I wanted this picture while the sign still hangs on the old bank building; one never knows when a wild storm might take it down and fling it in a heap somewhere. When the town stood as a viable shopping center this old bank hosted lots of activity. Reading old newspapers at the Heritage Center here in Bismarck offers proof of that. I remember going in there while it was still being used and remember how nice the woodwork looked. The chair on which I'm sitting came from there - a straight-backed oak chair with thin padding which I had re-upholstered a long time ago when I first acquired it, and again last winter when Mary freshened it up with a classical floral pattern. The chair will outlast me, even though the bank sign and the leaky-roofed building will disappear.
As we gathered in the cemetery on Monday a lot of talk centered on names of those who rest in eternity beneath their monument markers. The number of people I knew well and inter-acted with who have passed away grows year by year. But knowledge of another, older generation has faded. I could only guess one of the names, Joyal, was a past barber in town, and when I was in the younger grades I loved talking my mother out of a fifty-cent piece and get excused from class to go down there and get a haircut during the school day. I usually disturbed his card game when I entered the place, and I still remember how fast he trimmed me so he could get back to it.
Mary and I talk about where our final resting place should be, and we seem to agree that maybe this will be our spot, too. A hundred years hence people can then wonder who we were.
