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the cash register of Norman’s Hardware Store where Thomas rented space for his vacuum repair service. He paused from what he was doing—restocking nails of various sizes—and stared at me openly, then laughed and pointed at the hammer in my hand. “Well, now, ma’am, I think you got the wrong thing there in your hand,” he said. “Don’t you mean to be buying you a riveter?”
    I stared at him coolly and replied, “I beg your pardon?”
    He slapped his knee and said, “Oh, ’course you wouldn’t get it. You’re not old enough to remember them posters of Rosie. She was the home-front gal that rolled up her shirt-sleeves and went off to work in the factories back during wartime. Rosie the Riveter they called her. Not a real woman” (he pronounced it WOE-man), “’course, just a picture, like Uncle Sam.”
    I said, “Of course I know of Rosie the Riveter. I have read of her. But she was more than just a picture. She was based on a real woman named Rose Monroe, who was a riveter in a war munitions factory. Not only was she featured in films supporting the war effort, but her picture appeared on countless posters promoting the themes of sacrifice and heroism during World War II.” I paused, and Thomas looked at me as if struck dumb. He then pulled a red handkerchief out of the back pocket of his overalls and began rubbing his face vigorously.
    Normally I would not have said more, but during the silence I recalled from a book I had read a specific picture of Rosie flexing her arm, with the caption We Can Do It! printed beneath. “Rosie wore coveralls and tied up her hair with a bandanna,” I added, and Thomas lifted his face and studied me gravely as he stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Poster art was a very persuasive patriotic stimulant during World War II, and Rosie was a noble heroine,” I concluded before turning to continue my way down the aisle. I heard him clear his throat behind me, but he made no reply.
    No one was at the cash register, but Thomas ambled up the aisle behind me and walked behind the counter. “Norm’s gone off to his granddaughter’s wedding,” he said, “so I’m filling in.” He silently entered the correct figures on a small adding machine, then took my money and handed me the change, placing the coins in my palm first before handing me the bills. I found his manner as a cashier satisfactory. I dislike listening to a chatty cashier who feels compelled to wish me “a nice day,” and then lays down my change in the wrong order, bills on the bottom and coins piled on top, thus forcing me the inconvenience of sliding the coins off the bills, sometimes dropping one or more in the process, in order to transfer them into safekeeping. Coins should be deposited into the customer’s palm first, then bills. I have instructed more than one cashier concerning this point.
    Thomas slipped my hammer and the adding machine receipt into a brown paper bag and handed it to me, clearing his throat again. “You always talk that way?” he asked, smiling.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked.
    â€œOh, I don’t know. So…you know…like it’s written in a book.”
    â€œI suppose my speech is rather bookish,” I replied. “It is not, however, a style that I affect. For me it is natural.” I paused and added, “I did not grow up here.”
    Thomas was not the first to be taken back by my manner of speech. I can still clearly visualize the astonished expression that formed upon the face of my homeroom teacher when my grandmother enrolled me in the eighth grade in Marshland, New York, the fall after Mother died. My teacher, a young woman in her twenties named Mrs. Hartwell, asked me, in a tone that fell upon my ears as callow and indifferent, if this were my first year at L. K. Drake Junior High School, to which I replied, “Not