It is Way Back When Wednesday again. Last week I posted a sketch from my dad's 1948 sketchbook (he was 18)—today's painting, At Kastner's Store, was painted post-2000, but the memories associated with the Kastner's Store go back to the mid-1960s.

Our family then had a little cabin on Lake Burton in North Georgia. It was NOT one of the mega-mansions there now, and I wish we had kept it today! It was on Moccasin Creek Cove. The only place to get limited groceries in those days was a little store / fish-bait type place owned and run by the Kastner family. And there was LaPrad's, another local family-owned restaurant; it was family-style dining. You waited on the porch with up to fifty people until it was your turn to go in and eat. The room was full of long tables end to end, probably 40 people per table, and maybe two or three tables (from memory, I was small, so my memory may be larger than the facts).

Back to Kastner's, the little shop preceded what would be considered a convenience store today and was positioned at the end of long lake cove. There were fish ponds out the back of it where the Kastners bred fish to sell and eat. This painting is of one of those ponds.

The family story that goes with this pond is this: One day, Wade, my little brother, and my mom decided that it was time to set his little pet turtle FREE -into the wild. So the family packed into the Toyota Land Cruiser (one of maybe ten in the country; 1960s), and off we went to one of Kastner's ponds. Pond-side, a ceremony preceded the GREAT RELEASE. Then, the little two-inch turtle was lovingly placed into the pond. He swam happily off into the wild until, out of the darkness and depths, an enormous mouth appeared, up from below; it was open.