Rest Stop

I think it was called the Green Rooster in Arthur. It was rooster something, anyway. The restaurant where the bus always stopped halfway between Toronto and Port Elgin. The driver gave you enough time to stretch, use the facilities and have a coffee. That day I ended up sitting at the counter beside the old auctioneer who was heading back to town on the same bus. Once his voice rang loud over crowds of bidders. He rasped he was in Toronto for one of his throat cancer treatments. A character who had loomed large in our rural community, now cruelly silenced.