Silver Oak Welcomes You!

Chapter 1. Ron's Monster Vids

As for me, Holly Anderson, I'm currently the noon to midnight Friday and Saturday shift at Ron's Monster Vids,  a runty independently-owned movie rental shack wedged between a Happy Burger and a soy bean field along the highway between Evanston and Silver Oak.

And, no, I couldn't do any better.

I started working there three years ago, a few months after I graduated high school. I thought, as you probably would, too, that it would only be a temporary thing. Something that would allow me to step-stone my way into a better, more adult, job.

Tom told me I was delusional.

He said, "There is not bigger and better. There's only 'do you want fries with that? ' and A Stitch In Time. And you know how much Mom pays."

I said, "You've got to be kidding me."

But, I found that out for myself just like Tom had when he'd braved the want ads page and driven Mom's car up one highway and down another. Practically every job from here to Chicago that 10 years previously would've been performed by 16-to-19 -ear olds, was now being performed by 40-and-over year olds. Every dad who wasn't glued firmly in place had been beaten out the door by his wife and into bagging groceries or delivering pizzas.

Getting the job at Ron's Monster Vids – which at that time was still just plain old Ron's Video Rental – was, all things considered, surprisingly easy.

The place had been totally deserted – except for Ron's wife Denise, who was lounging behind the counter flipping through a glossy magazine, chewing breath mints and smoking.

She gave me the once over and asked how old I was and if I could count without using my fingers.

I said, "17, and yes, I can."

She asked me if I or my family were overly religious people.

I thought about that for a moment and said, "Not so as you'd notice".

She asked me if I had a boyfriend.

I said, "I'm not sure what that has to do with movie rental, but, no I don't."

She told me if that were the case, then I was hired right then and there for $4.25 the hour, if that was alright with me. 

When I started, Ron's Video Rental stocked general release movies and old black & white Hollywood classics. But then, two years ago, everything changed when the Bright-Idea Fairy broke her magic wand over Ron's head quite out of the blue one day. He'd been over to St. Louis for some reason and had seen something so stunning there that it had set him all atingle and itching to try it here. 

The first thing to go was the sign out front. 

Ignorantly commuting in to work, I was informed for a good ways down the highway that I no longer worked at Ron's Video Rental but now at Ron's Monster Vids.  I had to lean forward and squint because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. 

Ron had had the old, discreet white and blue sign taken down and a new, illuminated red and black one stuck up on an ugly metal pole that was sunk into a bath of concrete not a foot from the road-side. 

The sign was so big that when night fell and we flipped on its light, it cast such a black-light shadow on everything around it, that the Happy Burger next door looked like one of those suspect kiddie amusement parks from Saturday morning cartoons, and the soy bean field like an attractive helipad for alien space craft. 

After the sign came internal house-cleaning. Out went Bogart and Rita Hayworth, Michael J. Fox and Whoopi Goldberg, and in came every slasher, splatter and horror classic Ron could get his hands on. 

Everywhere you looked it was like blood was seeping out of the box covers and drooling down the shelves. It was disgusting and disturbing and they quadrupled their business overnight.

Every farm kid within a 100-mile radius couldn't wait to get a membership card.  And when Ron had an extra room and a half added on to the back of the building that he filled to the brim with Californian porn, all their fathers and uncles came pouring in for their cards, too.

A couple of months ago Ron finally upped my wage to $4.50 an hour.