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Pretzels and Ants

Sammi Stair

I hadn’t meant to hurt them. I was just curious. And too
young to understand what I was doing. I hadn’t meant to do
anything wrong.
Autumn has always been my favorite season, even back
then. We lived in a very tree-covered neighborhood, and my
five-year-old self was positively enamored by all the colors and
smells and the chill in the air. I have very distinct, if disjointed,
memories of leaf piles taller than my head, the hard, damp
ground beside a fire pit, the tears dripping down my nose be-
cause I had to wear a coat again. Once in a while, my mother and
I would don our windbreakers and walk to the little pretzel shop
down the street from our home. If there is one thing I remember
best, 26 years later, it is that pretzel shop. It was tiny, so tiny
that you couldn’t fit more than ten people in it at one time, and
it always smelled like dried pine needles and bread baking. The
whole shop (it was really more like a small cabin) was always
dimly lit, the small light fixture on the ceiling casting a warm
glow over the store, the beams nestling softly into the nooks and
cracks of the dark wooden walls.
Outside the shop was a large, old-fashioned water wheel.
My mom and I would take our soft pretzels out to the water
wheel and watch it as we ate. I was always fascinated by how,
like magic, the wheel was able to pick up the water and, whoosh,

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