The Car Barn

My stepdad looked up from the morning newspaper, spread across the table. “Bill, come here. Did you tell them your name was ‘Thompson?’” He pointed at my picture and the caption.

The image brought me back to that dry, cloudy day a few weeks earlier. I trod the footpath homeward past Turkey Creek from a visit to downtown Merriam, when a young couple approached me.

The lady gestured to the remains of a stone building. “Do you know what this is?”

“I believe it’s the old Strang Line car barn.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

I guided them through the freshly fallen leaves, inside the roofless walls where trees grew through the pavement. “Not much.” I pointed to a low, concrete structure. “I think that was a well.”

The young man waved toward a window opening, long devoid of frame and glass. “Could you stand up there with a rock? Like you’re throwing it? I’d like to get a picture.”

“Sure.”

“Hold it… Perfect.” He lowered the camera, and I threw the rock.

“What’s your name?”

“Billy Thompson.”

The couple bantered as they left and I never saw them again.

Dad’s voice brought me back. “I’m proud that you want to use my name, but yours is Bartlett. When your dad asks about this in the paper, tell him it was a mistake.”

Divorce wasn’t as common then as it is now, and I had no one and nothing to guide me. I knew the mother and children shared the name of the father. Since I was in the house of my stepfather and Mom was a Thompson, I reasoned I was a Thompson, too. So many things had changed in such a short time. Why should my name be any different? But, I couldn’t articulate my confusion.

“OK.”

William R. Bartlett lives in Belton with his family.