“That’s because the key chain is probably made by the Nash Car Company. Put it back, Wayne. We have to get to the store.” “Why can’t we take the Professor’s Nash to the store? He won’t be able to use it any time soon.”
“Because it’s the Professor’s car, not your car. Put the key chain back.”
But Wayne didn’t obey his brother. Instead, he opened the door to the garage and turned on the light. There sat the Professor’s 1946 Nash Ambassador convertible. Even though it was ten years old, the car looked as if it had just rolled off the car lot. It was black and sleek and outlined in glistening chrome. Like most of the cars of its day, it was sloped and curved as if it had muscles. The tires had white walls to them that had not even the slightest smudge of dirt. “Isn’t she a beauty?” said Wayne. “I’ll bet the Professor has someone come in to clean and polish her every month.” “I’m not going to let you drive the Professor’s car, Wayne.” “But I’m sixty-six years old!”
“No, Wayne.”
“But Dad let me drive his Fairlane.”
“Yes. Around the parking lot at the supermarket.” “But Rodney! That’s exactly where we’re going! To the parking lot of Toland’s Supermarket!”
“Absolutely not, Wayne.” Rodney snatched the key chain out of his brother’s hand. “The Professor has enough to worry about without you demolishing his car.”
“Then I’m just going to sit in it.”
“Aunt Mildred is probably really hungry, Wayne. We have to get to the store.” Rodney pushed his brother out of the way so he could close the door to the Professor’s garage. He returned the Nash key chain back to its hook on the key rack.
“Did you see how the grillwork shined, Rodney? How do you get grillwork on a car to shine like that? Say, Rodney, have you ever seen so much shiny front grillwork on one car?”
“You think about cars too much, Wayne. We have a lot of other things to think about right now.”
Wayne nodded. He reached up and longingly touched the Nash key chain. Then he touched the two keys hanging from the chain, one of which would start the engine of his favorite car in the world — a car he wasn’t allowed to drive, even though he was now sixty-six-years old.
When Rodney and Wayne got to the supermarket, they noticed something strange. There was a small crowd of people gathered outside. Most of the men and women were either the same age that Rodney and Wayne now were, or a little older. One of the men looked like a grown-up version of Davy Rockwell, a boy in Rodney and Wayne’s class at school.
“Is that you, Davy?” asked Wayne.
“Yeah. Is that you, Rodney and Wayne?”
The brothers nodded. Wayne was about to comment on how
different they all looked, when Davy called out to the people around him, “Hey, lookit, everybody! It’s Rodney and Wayne. Hey guys, how come we went from being babies to this? What happened?”
“Yeah, what happened?” asked Sharon, a blond-haired girl in Rodney and Wayne’s class who now had streaks of white running through her hair.
Before either of the twins could answer, a boy named Virgil, who had been the president of the Eighth-Grade French Club and always liked to use a little French when possible, said, “So I’ll get to be a thirteen-year-old again soon, no? N’est pas, mon amis?” (“Is it not so, my friends?”)
Rodney didn’t want to tell everyone that it was on account of the Professor’s accident that over fifty years had been added to everyone’s ages. So he said, “The Professor is working on the problem. We are hopeful that things will be back to normal in no time.”
Then Rodney turned to Davy. “What are all these people doing out here? Is the store closed?”
“Kind of. It’s closed to anybody who needs to buy food for their really old family members.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rodney.
Before Davy could answer, a man holding a megaphone stepped up onto a wooden citrus crate. Everybody turned to look at him. The man looked about seventy-five or so. He also looked like Mr. Toland, Sr., the owner of the store.
“May I have your attention please! Quiet, please!” shouted the man through his megaphone. “For those of you who do not recognize me, I am Henry Toland, Jr. As you can see from this door, we had a break-in last night.” Mr. Toland, Jr. drew the attention of the crowd to the door in question with an exaggerated nod of his head. The door was not easy to miss. Its shattered pane of glass had been replaced by cardboard and duct tape. “We are still open for business, and you are free to enter, but you must know that there are certain items that are no longer in stock. You will not find them here and you will not be permitted to hound my store clerk Miss Choate about it. She has far too much to do, since all of my other clerks cannot make it in to work due to advanced age.”
A woman raised her hand. “Please give us that list of unavailable items if you would.”
“Yes. I have the list right here.” Mr. Toland, Jr., pulled a small piece of paper from his shirt pocket. He took a pair of eyeglasses out of a different pocket and put them on. He cleared his throat. “Oatmeal, Cream-of-Wheat, and other soft cereals.”
A collective gasp went up from the crowd.
“All Jell-O products. All gelatins of every kind. All custards and box puddings.”
“Even Tapioca?” asked a man in the back.
“Yes. Tapioca and every other kind of box pudding. Also Postum. And Malt-o-meal. That goes under the heading of soft cereals. Let me see — oh, and all soft fruit that can be easily gummed.”
Another gasp. A different woman raised her hand.
“Yes, Miss Edwards?”
“But that leaves nothing for my mother to eat. She is now 104 and has no teeth!”
“I am sorry Miss Edwards, but it is out of my hands.”
“When will you get in more soft foods from the warehouse?”
“There are no more soft foods in the warehouse. They have also been taken, and no one knows when they will be replaced with a new shipment.”
Now Davy Rockwell raised his hand. “Excuse me, Mr. Toland, but what about the other stores around town? Do you know if they have soft foods in stock — foods that are easy on the digestion and if necessary may be gummed rather than chewed?”
“I have spoken with the managers and owners of the other food markets in town — or, rather, I have spoken with their sons and daughters who are now running their fathers’ stores, and I am told that each of those stores was also robbed last night. As I understand it, there is no more soft food available for purchase anywhere in the town of Pitcherville.”
Rodney and Wayne turned to each other and exchanged astonished looks. “What about Aunt Mildred? What will she eat?” said Wayne in a low voice.
“And the Professor too? And everyone else who will now require a soft and mushy diet?”
The two boys shook their heads worriedly. It was a sad state of affairs for a town without blenders.
(Pitcherville had no blenders in the year 1956. Craft Appliances had begun to sell them right after they came out in the 1930s, but then an accident involving an overly-curious, careless customer whose name is not important to this story — but who could easily be identified by a deficiency in the number of fingers on his right hand — motivated Mr. Craft to send all of his blenders back to their manufacturers and to order no more for the sake of other customer fingers.)