Mother pulled the beat to hell diluted blood red minivan containing my brother and I into the darkened parking lot. The car couldn't park fast enough as my brother and I tore the creaky side door open and leapt onto the awaiting pavement. We stepped from darkness into light as we hopped onto a curb to be greeted by the brilliance of neon lights erected atop a single story rectangular building squatting at the top of the rectangular lot like a full measure rest. Glass windows as whole walls teased the treasures that lay before my eyes window-shopping like madmen I felt the objects of my covetry leap from their white shelves into my sweaty youthful grasp. Mother breezed forward, stepping across the tier confidant and disengaged; the front door rang announcing our presence. Two bells sounded: ring ring. The Rhines were here. Like a pistol shot signifying the start of a race, my brother and I scampered and scattered and scuttled like wild animals, scouring the shelves that sat dispersed through the gleaming room consuming with our eyes words that told stories with pictures that danced and sang. Clusters of shelves huddled together under several flat signs hung by frail strings dangling from the ceiling displaying themes that told me where to avoid "Romance" and where to find my beloved "Science Fiction." I halted, realizing almost as if there were indentations within the itchy carpet that had alerted me to the place where I had cemented by ruddy feet countless times before. I took my roving eyes from the stalling ground to peer up into the shelves that loomed over me like giants, arching over my head like holy stones erected atop holy celebratory sites of yore. My fingers traced along the shelves trailing over the innumerate plastic spines that encased my bountiful riches; I mouthed the vibrant words imprinted like cattle on each of them and sang to myself stories that spawned off of each one before finding the paragon that most expertly weaved JR the Raconteur into its fabrications. I bore into its dazzling shell hungrily, gobbling up faces and places and names and dates I spun it over to its backside to read plots to read histories to read legacies to read memories I read and read and saw and saw my mind was never more alive with the astounding conception of limitless potentialities my night was just getting started and with my final selection--and mother's blessing--I would march home victoriously wielding my fortune, my medium for which the pictures in my mind would transpose and dance before me like luminous sprites on the brilliant splendor of a luminescent two dimensional stage that is the television screen. It was the weekend getaway I waited for with anticipation every Saturday; I was an unversed monk relishing in the ancient libraries of History.
To the video stores of yore.
