The Center Aisle

Randall Nathan went to Ace Spade’s “Moo Value Hardware and Dairy Equipment Store” to get a spark plug for his persimmon pudding pulvinator. He asked the lady at the cash register just inside the door where to find an SP for a PPP. She said, “Just start down the center aisle and someone will help you.”

He did as she told. She was right. He hadn’t gotten very far down the center aisle, between hoes and rakes on the left and paint and bungee cords on the right, when a man wearing a Moo Value kilt and overseas cap said, “What do you need?” When Randall told him he needed an SP for a PPP, he asked, “What size?” Randall didn’t know there were different sizes of persimmon pulvinators, since hardly anyone pulvinates persimmons to make pudding anymore, since persimmon pudding technology has advanced so quickly since Apple got into the business and brought out the iPers, and Amazon introduced the Persimdle, but the Moo Value is one of those stores that has parts for any machine that ever existed. After Randall described his pulvinator, they settled on the 3.14 spark plug.

As he walked back to his 1956 Ford pickup in the Moo Value parking lot, carrying the surprisingly inexpensive SP for his PPP, Randall Nathan thought about how he had walked down the center aisle and how there was someone there to help him:

The important events of life happen when you walk down the center aisle, he thought. This spring all those children at the high school walked down the center aisle to get their diplomas. People walk down the center aisle in church to get married or to bring their babies for baptism or to get confirmed. They walk down the center aisle to take communion and go back by the side aisles. At your funeral, they’ll wheel your casket down the center aisle, and folks will come down the center aisle to take a last peek at you. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he talked about staying in the straight and narrow way—just walk down that center aisle, and there will be someone there to help you find what you need.