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Below are five sample columns by Scott Hollifield. To learn more about running Scott’s new columns weekly, email scotthollifieldwrites@gmail.com.

Hollifield: A chat about where it all used to be

There we were, two hometown boys separated in age by 15 or 20 years, sitting in one of the last old-school, full-service gas stations in the world (or at least in the parameters of my world), talking about where things used to be.

Needing a vehicle inspection for my truck, I pulled into Main Street Exxon on a new set of tires I had to break down and buy to pass that inspection and sauntered inside.

Main Street Exxon, conveniently located on Main Street, is for sale. It’s been there a while, long before Esso became Exxon. Ownership, according to various sources, some of which are reliable, went from two fellows who opened it in 1945, then to another fellow, then to Little John, then to Johnny, who recently decided it was time to slow down a bit and do something else.

Back before previous owner Little John rode off into the sunset, he talked about the business in a newspaper story published a decade ago.

“We still pump our customers’ gas, clean their windshields and check their oil if they want,” Little John said. “We also do light repairs and oil changes. That’s the way we’ve always done things. Like they say, you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.”

He left out vehicle inspections, but that’s what I needed that day and that’s what I got, plus a pleasant conversation about where things used to be.

I spoke with Johnny’s son Caleb, told him the keys were in it and sat down in the office by the bays across from the only other person there, a well-dressed gray-haired gentleman some years my senior.

“How are you doing?” I said in a friendly manner meant to assure him I wasn’t there to rob the place. “It’s vehicle inspection time for me again.”

“We don’t have to do that in South Carolina anymore,” he said, leading to a discussion about how it was a government racket designed to bilk hard-working taxpayers like us while failing to adequately compensate honest gas stations like the one in which we were sitting for the time it takes fine fellows like Caleb to do it.

“What brings you here?” I asked him.

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“Someone told me I had a brake light out.”

“Don’t they fix those down in South Carolina? Maybe they ought to crank up those inspections again.”

“They do,” he said. “We’ve got a house just north of here. We split our time between South Carolina and here.”

He said he planned to move to that house full time once he finished up business in the Palmetto state, where he moved in 1984 when the textile industry was in a steep decline.

“Where did you grow up?” he asked.

“Right down the road,” I said. “A house back up on the hill behind where Tri-County Oil Company used to be.”

“Now, where was that located?”

“It was right beside where Marion Equipment used to be.”

“Wait, I thought that was on down where the fish camp used to be?”

“No, you are thinking of where the Ford place used to be. This was across the creek and up the hill from where Briscoe’s Trade Lot used to be.”

Finally, we got our used-to-be’s in a row, and I told him that Main Street Exxon was for sale, something he was not aware of. He said growing up, he worked there and nearly every other gas station in town, pumping gas, cleaning windshields and checking oil. Those were all used to be.

I said I hoped whoever took it over would try to keep it like it is. It would be a shame to sit around talking about where one of the last old-school, full-service gas stations in the world (or at least in the parameters of my world) used to be.

Scott Hollifield: The ballad of the traveling piano

Breaking news: A piano is heavy.

Piano aficionados, roadies and furniture movers are keenly aware of this fact, but I only remember it when I relocate a vintage Currier from one place where it was rarely played to another place where it was rarely played to a third place where it most likely will be rarely played.

The kid, with a new house and a new job a hundred miles from her raising, wanted a memento from her childhood. I suggested several of her speeding tickets, framed, but she wanted her momma’s piano since it was the heaviest and most useless item in the house.

The piano was manufactured smack-dab in the kid’s hometown before it began to travel around the state not being played.

Here is an entry from the website bluebookofpianos.com:

“Currier Piano Company’s heritage of handcrafted excellence began in 1823 with the Boston founding of Currier & Company. U.S. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were early owners of Currier Pianos. Since the heart of fine piano manufacture is not found in highly mechanized operations, Currier Piano built its present plant in Western North Carolina. This lush mountain country provided Currier with two vital assets — craftsmen and artisans capable of patient, expertly handcrafted work and a ready supply of premium mountain hardwoods and fruitwoods.”

This particular piano originally traveled from the lush mountain country to the flatlands of central North Carolina without the assistance of any of the Adams boys, craftsmen or artisans. There a young keyboard prodigy learned “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and the opening notes to the theme from “Hill Street Blues.”

And that was it.

Thirty years later, our kid, daughter of the aforementioned keyboard prodigy, came along and banged on that piano every time she visited her grandparents’ house. Enduring that endless barrage of discordant noise, someone — certainly not me — said, “We need this piano at our house.”

That was my first tangle with the behemoth. Gathering enough family members with strong backs, we managed to get it on a U-Haul truck and maneuver it back to lush mountain country.

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With sweating, grunting and cursing the day John Quincy Adams was born, we wrangled the piano into a room in the house where I swore it would stay until the end of time or I learned to play “Great Balls of Fire,” pushed it into the front yard and set it ablaze with lighter fluid while maniacally pounding the keys like a hopped-up Jerry Lee for the amusement of the neighborhood.

A dozen years went by and that is not what happened.

“Dad, can we move the piano to my house?”

“No. The neighbors have been looking forward to ‘Great Balls of Fire.’”

“Please?”

“Sigh.”

I checked with a moving company, but, as I said, furniture movers, like piano aficionados and roadies, are keenly aware of the weight of a piano and apparently charge by the pound. It was out of our price range.

Once again, despite my end-of-time vow, I gathered enough family members with strong backs, now older and more fragile than the last move, and loaded this monster of “premium mountain hardwoods and fruitwoods” on a U-Haul truck for more traveling.

Here is another entry from bluebookofpianos.com:

“… Currier has broadened its manufacturing capabilities to include deluxe style consoles, professional studios as well as a line of quality grand pianos. Along with its regular spinet and console production, these new additions enable Currier to meet all piano needs.”

Yes, Currier met all piano needs except moving a piano without experiencing excruciating physical injuries and developing a deep, deep hatred for U.S. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

“This is yours now,” I told the kid, my hands on my knees, gasping for breath. “Enjoy the premium mountain hardwoods and fruitwoods, and if you ever plan on moving, I suggest you buy some lighter fluid and learn to play ‘Great Balls of Fire.’”

Scott Hollifield: In wake of banking crisis, Cousin Junior is here to help

The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank — the second- and third-biggest financial institution collapses in U.S. history — have many people worried about their money.

It also has a boatload of experts paddling to the scene of this Titanic-like disaster as quickly as possible to provide analysis and advice, even Cousin Junior, a frequent contributor to this column who may or may not exist only in my imagination.

Cousin Junior, a jack-of-all-trades who previously worked as a bounty hunter, blogger and backyard chemist among other vocations, recently opened Cousin Junior’s Financial Services, specializing in money management, tax preparations and taxidermy.

He called me, somehow circumventing the blocked number system, and began to ramble on.

“I guess you heard about them banks going under,” he said. “I figured you would want to tell the four or five people who still read your little article or whatever it’s called in the paper what a well-respected financial expert like me thinks about the whole deal and how we as a nation are going straight to hell in a handbasket, financially speaking, unless we start listening to well-respected financial experts like me. ”

“When did you become a financial expert?”

“When I opened my office in a converted shipping container down where the blacktop ends on Big Snake Road, next to the lot where the adult bookstore used to be before Rev. Jenkins ran through it with a bulldozer. It’s a prime location. I’ve got people in and out of there all the time, and not all of them asking what happened to the adult bookstore.”

“Do you have any actual clients?”

“Oh, yeah. Just the other day, a fellow came in and asked me what he should do with the money he got from the scrap metal he stole, uh, I mean collected, and I told him it would behoove him to diversify. He shouldn’t bury all his money in a mayonnaise jar in the backyard. He should put a little bit in a coffee can and push it way back in the cabinet. Maybe put another handful in a paper sack in his outbuilding. And, as his financial adviser, I should have explicit details as to exactly where this money is in case something bad should happened to him, such as a Prius falling on him while he ‘adjusted’ the catalytic converter.”

“Tell you what, Cousin Junior, you send me a press release and if I can’t come up with something else to write about, I’ll use it.”

Unfortunately for you, the reader, that’s what happened.

Headline: Well-respected financial expert offers perspective on bank failures.

BIG SNAKE ROAD — Are you worried about your money after the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history?

Cousin Junior offers reassuring advice.

“If I was you, I would absolutely be soiling my britches over this,” said the Big Snake Road-based financial expert. “This is bad. This is holding-a-tin-cup-on-the-street-corner bad. This is stealing-all-the-copper-wire-out-of-granny’s-house-to-pay-for-taxidermy bad.”

According to Cousin Junior, here are some signs your bank may be failing:

At Christmas, it gave out calendars for 1975.

The drive-thru no longer takes deposits but does serve fries.

The name on the president’s door has been changed to Milburn Drysdale.

The bank guard wears Kevlar and has orders to shoot to kill.

“These certainly are uncertain times,” said Cousin Junior. “But with me, you can rest assured that whether you need advice on what to do with your lottery winnings, fake receipts to accompany your tax filings or you just want that prized critter stuffed and mounted, you are in good hands at Cousin Junior’s Financial Services.”

Make an appointment today, before another bank goes belly up.

Scott Hollifield: “The Case of the Dead Raccoon”

When a dead raccoon showed up in our yard a couple of weeks ago, I pondered a way to tell the tale that would take it from revolting to slightly less revolting. I decided to go with the style of hard-boiled detective fiction for this true (though slightly embellished) story I call …

“The Case of the Dead Raccoon”

I was in my office, looking forward to that bottle of hooch that waited at the end of the day for a down-and-out P.I. That’s when she burst through the door.

She was tall, with gams that wouldn’t quit and a look in her eye that said she had been there, done that and won the pony. She was the kind of dame a gumshoe like me wouldn’t mind getting to know a little better.

“Say, what is the meaning of this?” I said, glaring from under the brim of my fedora.

“Why are you talking like that?” she shot back.

“Like what, see?”

“Like you’ve been watching ’30s gangster movies on Turner Classic all day instead of writing a column.”

“Hey, I ask the questions around here. Now, what is it I can do for you, lady?”

“There is a dead raccoon in our yard.”

“I’ll take the case. I get a hundred a day plus expenses.”

“You’ll get your %$# out there and get that dead raccoon out of our yard.”

Yeah, she was a feisty one alright. Cross her and a man could end up dead. Dead like a … raccoon.

*

The body was in a ditch at the end of the yard, stuck halfway in the opening of a culvert partially covered by chicken wire some hapless homeowner had put up in a futile attempt to keep groundhogs out of his garden.

“Somebody sure had it in for you, buddy,” I said.

He was long past answering back.

For now, he would go down as a John Doe, which I found confusing since he was a raccoon and not a female deer with a masculine first name. I decided to call him Gerry RaCooney, as a tribute to former heavyweight boxer Gerry Cooney, who wore a similar dazed expression when Michael Spinks knocked him out in June of 1987.

“Don’t worry, Gerry,” I said as I used posthole diggers to load the body into a cardboard box for disposal. “I’m on the case.”

*

Suspects weren’t hard to come by on this side of town. There was Ma Groundhog and her boys, a produce theft ring most active from May to September, stealing from the rubes who were dumb enough to plant a garden and think they could get away with it. Did Gerry run afoul of her brood and pay the ultimate price?

Then there was the Feral Street Cats, a gang of neighborhood toughs led by Mr. Orange.

Had Mr. Orange ordered a hit on Gerry, a whack carried out by the vicious Earl Gray Jr. and Whiskers Billy?

And just how did that poor bastard Gerry die in the yard? I guess that was for the raccoroner to figure out.

*

In the end, I did the job I was hired to do. I removed Gerry, poor, dead Gerry from the yard. I wasn’t hired to crack the case. I was hired to clean up the mess.

“Is the dead raccoon gone?” she asked when I went back inside.

I looked into those eyes, those eyes that could drive a man to do the unthinkable.

“Yeah, the dead raccoon is gone,” I said. “I did your dirty work, lady. But he was not just a dead raccoon to me. He was Gerry. Gerry! And don’t you ever forget it.”

I closed the door to my office and took the bottle of hooch down off the shelf.

“Here’s to you, Gerry,” I said, “the best dead raccoon a private dick like me could ever dispose of. May you rest in peace.”

Scott Hollifield: Goodwill find sure to inspire animated blockbusterples coming soon.

I’m sure Owen is a nice kid, but he isn’t getting any of my Disney money.

I was at the last-chance Goodwill store, the place where items go that are too ragged or too weird for the regular Goodwill store, pawing through bins heaped with clothes, broken toys and VHS exercise tapes from the ’80s when I came across a baseball with “OWEN” written on it in magic marker. Deeper in that bin, I found another “OWEN” baseball. Then another and another.

I began piling Owen’s baseballs in an old cook pan just to see how many were there. A fellow at the other end of the bin noticed my interest and said, “There’s a couple more over here.”

“Toss ’em to me,” I said.

He did. Not much of an arm on him. If I were a Major League scout I would advise the ballclub not to sign him despite his helpfulness.

Owen’s baseballs numbered so many they overflowed the cook pan. There were at least 25, and I hatched an amazing story called “The Mystery of Owen’s Baseballs,” which would soon get a title change.

Since I have no use for 25 baseballs, I left them in the bin for someone who did. Back home, I Googled “Owen baseball” and a few of the top results were the Charles D. Owen High School team in Black Mountain, N.C., a good 75 miles from this particular Goodwill; Marv Owen, the Detroit Tigers starting third basemen from 1933 to 1937; and Owen Miller, shortstop for the Amarillo Sod Poodles in the Texas League.

None of those seemed like the Owen I was looking for. I imagined Owen as a kid who loved baseball. Every birthday and every Christmas, all he wanted was a baseball. On each baseball he received from mom and dad and grandpa and grandma and Uncle Steve when Uncle Steve wasn’t in prison, he wrote “OWEN” in big letters with a magic marker.

And the name of the story I would option to Disney for millions of dollars for an animated blockbuster then changed from “The Mystery of Owen’s Baseballs” to “Owen and the Magic Baseballs.”

Here’s a general outline:

Owen loved baseballs. Each Christmas, his parents asked, “What would you like Santa to bring you, Owen?”

“Gee,” Owen said each and every time. “A baseball would be swell.”

Before his birthday, his parents would always ask, “What would you like for your birthday, Owen?”

“Gee,” Owen said each and every time. “A baseball would be swell.”

“The kid is obsessed with baseballs,” dad said to mom one day while Owen was upstairs writing his name on his 25th ball, a Rawlings with a synthetic hide. “Why isn’t he watching YouTube videos like other kids his age? Baseball will just get him into trouble. Next thing you know he’ll be betting on games like Pete Rose or juicing like Jose Canseco. Do you want that?

The next day, the mother dumped Owen’s baseballs at the last-chance Goodwill where, a short time later, a down-and-out newspaper columnist happened upon them and, perplexed by why they were there, concocted a ridiculous origin story because he didn’t have much else to write about.

A Disney executive, hungry for the next animated blockbuster, read the story. It seems the executive’s grandma sometimes cut the bonehead’s columns out of the newspaper and mailed them to him because she thought he was funny. Though the Disney executive usually threw them away thinking grandma was losing her marbles, he read this one and proclaimed, “This is it! ‘Owen and the Magic Baseballs’ is our next animated blockbuster! Give that bonehead millions of dollars.”

The end.

Thanks for the inspiration Owen, but that Disney money is all mine.