The Unapproachable

    In his youth he imagined that the residents of such a large house must be extremely wealthy, and being wealthy must also be extremely powerful.

   They were, no doubt, the type of people his mother would refer to as "unapproachable".

   He was not sure what "unapproachable" meant, but from the manner in which his mother stated the word he was certain it had a negative connotation.

   It was while he was employed at Max's service station, in the summer of his 16th year, that he first had contact with a resident of the house. She was young, a teenager such as himself, and she pulled in next to the full-serve pumps behind the wheel of a small convertible sports car. 

   He had seen the car around town before, but he had never seen the driver. Now she was sitting less than five feet from where he stood asking him to please fill up the tank with premium and to check the windshield wiper fluid.

   Without hesitation and in spite of the fact that he had been told that windshield wiper fluid was only given if the fill-up was $30 or more, after filling the tank he lifted the hood of her car and topped off the windshield wiper fluid.

   The smile she flashed as she handed over the $17.35 for the fill up nearly knocked him over. Like every boy and most of the men in the small town, he was now smitten with one of the "unapproachable."