Village Temptation

The village had just six stores, a bakery, a newspaper store, a general store, a funeral home a garden store and a butcher. I grew up in this village and never knew much more outside of the virtual borders of my little life.
A small life, in a village where everybody knows everybody's personal business, doesn't really offer much offers of temptation one would think, and yet, temptation does seem to exist. Sometime that red little devil gets a minute more attention on your right shoulder than it's counterpart, the tiny angel on the left shoulder.
Take for example the funeral home, it was right next to Ed's butcher place. I always wondered about that, why on earth would you think of opening a funeral home next to a butcher, it doesn't really make sense, unless of course there is a reason for it. I learned soon that temptation here meant to believe all the horror stories that emanated from this unlikely duo of business places. I mean, like Frances who claims to have found a topaz cut stone inside the sausage she bought at Ed's butcher store.
Ed first claimed it belonged to his wife and he wanted it back, but he was separated from her three years before!!! After much discussion and deliberations in the town council they came to a conclusion that the pig who's karma unfortunately became entangled with the production of the sausage in question must have been from Tim's farm. The butcher's wife now in turn apparently spent many volunteer hours there taking care of Tim's dogs and somehow the pig must have fallen on her ring that she presumably lost when she was romping with the dogs. Other people claimed:"It's not Tim's dogs she was romping with!" But I still think it was the dogs that had done it, and yes, I still don't give a free run on the undertaker next to Ed's on this Topaz issue!
Then there was Frank who swears he found a real gold nugget in the 2 lbs of fresh, mixed ground beef he had bought at Ed's Butcher place. Some believe him, some don't, and then there are these who are tempted to believe the rumours about it having been a gold tooth.. Yeah, right!
Anyhow, see how tempting stories can be?
Ed, our butcher, is a straight forward, no nonsense, big bear of a guy. He really is a sweatheart as my mum swears to, always in his store, taking care of his customers. My mother went by him at least three or four times a week. I always tried to go along as Ed's store had one of those gumball machines that produced big clear see-through plastic balls whith a toy. I used to pull my mother's skirt to get the three coins needed to make this wonder machine operate and produce one of those figuratively speaking golden eggs for me. Each ball would either contain a toy, a puzzle or any other novelty, and remember, to me at that time, most things were "novelties". Sometimes she would give in and give me the coins, if I was persitent enough. It worked especially well, when she was alone in the store and chatting away with Ed.
And then sometimes we would go into the store, she would be chatting with Ed, I would tug her bottom clothing and she would tell me she didn't carry her purse! I would not fall for that, as of course she would have had to have her purse with her else, how would she buy her meat? But just to show how nice Ed was, he would give me some coins from his own pocket so I could get like two and sometimes even enough coins for three of those balls out of the machine whilst he and my mother went to the back to check out the new "sausage and prime extra lean meat" , as Ed used to call it. Secretly, I think though that when they went to the back area, that Ed also pulled my mother's skirt to get his money back as her clothing always seemed out of line when they returned in the store. Only noticed that a couple of times though as playing with my new toys and puzzles which came from the plastic balls were the biggest temptation to me. :-)