The Sign

You never know where a conversation with a stranger will take you. Such was the case with MY Jane and me this past Friday evening.

We had gone to Casey’s Restaurant in Sault St Marie for dinner after returning from our Agawa Canyon train trip. Because it was a busy Friday night and we had not made reservations,  we were directed to the adjacent bar area to wait a few minutes for a table to become available

We sat on the two bar stools next to a rotund fellow wearing a light coloured fedora who had obviously been there for some time. His eyes were glassy and when he spoke, his speech was slurred. But he was a friendly sort, and soon introduced himself as Mike.  He went on to tell me that he was originally from a small town called Webbwood, East of Sault St Marie.

As soon as he mentioned Webbwood, my interest was piqued because, on our way up there, I had noticed a sign for the General Store there. I chuckled because I knew Jane would get rankled by the term “and wife”. 

When I mentioned to Mike about the sign that read Tom Stewart And Wife General Store, he quickly told me that he knew Tom Stewart very well and that Tom was now deceased. But, he added, Tom’s wife was still alive and, in fact, he had attended her 90th birthday and had brought her a dream catcher and Steam Whistle mug as a gift.

I found it fascinating that the sign that caught my eye in the village of Webbwood had now become a thread in this conversation with a complete stranger.

I decided to stop in at that General Store on our return home.

When we got to  Webbwood yesterday, we stopped at the General Store where I bought a couple of lottery tickets. The cashier was a friendly lady who I soon found out was Tom Stewart’s daughter, Bunny.

I told her I had a story to tell her and related the conversation I had with Mike the night before. She laughed and said she knew Mike very well and confirmed that Mike had indeed been at her Mom’s 90 th birthday party. 

When we talked more about the sign, she told us that her brothers were upset with their Dad for putting “and wife” on that sign. They felt it should have read Tom Stewart and Sons. She said, “Dad told them when they started working as hard as his wife, he would change the sign.” Then she laughed and said, “That’s why it still reads that way.”

If I win big on those lottery tickets I bought at Tom Stewart and Wife General Store, then I will truly believe in “signs”!