Jody and Linda are quite a pair....

Jody Cochran and Linda Seemon are quite a pair.
A pair of what? Well…..characters. They both work at a small, mountaintop liquor/beer/smokes store in Summit, Arkansas. I climbed and climbed the roads around Summit after leaving Cotter, Arkansas recently, and almost went past the place, as non-descript as a building can be.
I walked in, where Jody Cochran was behind the counter. The inventory was sparse, but was mostly alcohol or tobacco related, and I didnt see a soda in sight. I was directed to a small, homestyle refrigerator, where a selection of “soda pop” was to be had. I grabbed a Mountain Dew and went to pay for it. Jody would not allow me to, telling me that she would take care of it.
I was about to leave after a bit of chit chat, when it suddenly began to rain. I was not prepared for that and asked if I could wheel my cart inside, which she said to certainly do so. As it rained, we talked more, and I found out that she is a 56 year old native of Waterloo, Iowa who moved to the Ozarks fifteen years ago when her husband decided that it was time for them to go live on a mountaintop. He drives a truck and she at first worked at a veterinarian’s clinic, where a big heart can cause one to end up with a full house. Jody now has 30 dogs. I asked her if she knows all their names. Silly question. “They’re my babies”, she said.
Now she works at the store, owned by a friend of the family. She does the morning shift, and at three in the afternoon Linda Seemon comes in to finish the day. Jody predicted that when Linda arrived and heard my story that she would probably take me home for the night, not for any purpose other than to give me a warm and dry place to stay, as kind hearted people will.
Well, Linda Seemon, a retired firefighter from Gary Indiana, did indeed offer me a place to stay, and I was about to accept, but the urge for moving on was too strong and I politely but graciously declined. She told me that if I just sat there long enough I would see some real characters, so I sat and talked a bit. She filled me in on the locals. Both women described the people as poor but happy and also said that they were as honest as the day is long and that there was a sense of community there that one would be hard pressed to find elsewhere. I soon saw what she meant.
A pair of men walked in. One, apparently older and with a cane, was the driver of the truck. The other, a young, blank looking man whom I will I will call “John’s son” had come in to pay a tab that he had incurred earlier. Jody had handed him two packs of smokes when he didn’t have the money. Here is what transpired after he paid his tab. At that time, the man with the cane purchased a lighter for “John’s son”.
Jody had gone to a bank to make change for Linda’s register. The two men had gone by the time she returned. The conversation between the two women went something like this:
Linda: “John’s son and Carl came in to pay John’s son’s tab”
Jody: Yes, he got two packs of cigarettes earlier, and left me that thing on the floor (there was a small gadget on the floor near the counter). I asked him what it was and he said it was a compressor. I asked him if it worked and he said “Hell no, that’s why I took it out.”
Linda: And can you believe this: Carl actually BOUGHT a lighter for John’s son???
Jody: Noooooooo. Really???
And so it went on. “John’s son “, as it turns out, is a simple minded young man with long hair, and he lives with a girl, expecting a baby, in a tent in his mother’s back yard. He receives a check monthly for mental health issues and his mother takes the entire thing, telling him that if he doesn’t like it he can take his girl and tent and move elsewhere. He works odd jobs and sells scrap metal when he can, with Carl driving him.
I named him John’s son because Linda and Jody referred to him as that when they were talking about a man named John who was always trying to ask Linda to dance when there is “Music on the Square” in nearby Yellville.
Such is life in the Ozarks.