Robin Hood Is Gone

I have been living in this house for 26 years, and at the end of my street is a service station that has always been the domain of Robin Hood. That’s his name, I’m not kidding. In the early years our relationship was, shall we say, utilitarian: I came to his office only when my car had need.

Somewhere along the line I bought a foreign car, and Robin only serviced American-made vehicles, so our relationship faded: a few words of greeting when I walked past on the way to the town center, and eventually just a cursory wave of the hand. Later still, he seems to have snagged a contract with U.S. Postal Service because I saw only mail trucks on his lot.