The deal was already done. Three years later, Dad walked into Grandpa’s old bar, ready to buy it. He had no idea the deed was already in someone else’s name. Mine.
He came through the green front door carrying a cashier’s check, with my younger sister walking beside him like a real estate agent about to close the biggest deal of her career.
I was standing in the back office, watching them through the partially open doorway.
Dad stopped just inside.
For a moment, he looked around the room.
The old wooden bar had been polished. The brass fixtures gleamed beneath the hanging lights. The pool table stood in its familiar corner, and the faded photographs of former customers had been returned to the walls.
Then his eyes settled on the jukebox.
His expression changed.
“What is that doing here?”
My sister, Kaylee, followed his gaze.
She stared at the chrome-covered machine standing beside the entrance.
Then she noticed the small black frame hanging above it.
Inside was a piece of cardboard.
One word had been written across it in thick black marker.
FREE.
Dad recognized the handwriting immediately.
I knew he would.
He had written it himself three years earlier, when he’d left that same jukebox beside the curb with the garbage.
Before either of them could say anything else, Dot Maryman stepped out from behind the bar.
“Morning, Dale.”
Dad looked toward her.
“Morning, Dot.”
He cleared his throat.
“Kaylee said we’re here to finish the paperwork.”
Dot folded the dish towel in her hands.
“That’s what we’re here to discuss.”
Kaylee opened her leather portfolio.
“We’ve brought the updated offer. One hundred sixty-five thousand, just like we talked about.”
Dot looked toward the office.
I took a slow breath.
Then stepped into the room carrying a manila folder.
Dad saw me first.
“Hollis?”
I nodded.
“Morning, Dad.”
He stared at me.
For three years, he’d barely spoken to me.
Now I was standing inside the building he’d been trying to purchase, wearing work boots and holding documents he didn’t know existed.
Kaylee frowned.
“What are you doing here?”
I placed the folder on the bar.
Then opened it.
Inside was a certified copy of the recorded deed.
I turned it toward them.
The property description was printed at the top.
The recording information appeared beneath it.
And on the line identifying the new owner was my full name.
Hollis August Mercer.
I looked directly at my father.
“Dot sold me the building three weeks ago.”
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then I added, “Grandpa’s bar belongs to me now.”
Dad looked down at the paper.
Then toward the jukebox.
Then back at me.
His cashier’s check was still tucked into the pocket of his shirt.
And for the first time in my life, the man who had always decided what mattered in our family seemed unable to decide what to say.
My name is Hollis Mercer.
I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve spent most of my adult life repairing appliances in Kokomo, Indiana.
Refrigerators.
Washing machines.
Dryers.
Dishwashers.
Occasionally an old radio or a record player if someone knows I enjoy working on them.
I like machines.
Not because they’re simple.
Some are anything but simple.
I like them because they respond to attention.
If a dryer stops heating, there’s a reason.
If a refrigerator makes an unfamiliar sound, something has changed.
You can test the parts, follow the wiring, and eventually understand what went wrong.
People are different.
Sometimes they know exactly what they’ve done and still insist nothing happened.
I learned that lesson from my father.
But before I tell you about him, I need to tell you about my grandfather.
His name was August Mercer.
Everybody called him Augie.
For thirty-one years, he operated a small tavern on the north side of Kokomo.
It was called Augie’s.
Grandpa said a good place didn’t need an elaborate name if people already knew where to find it.
The building was made of old red brick.
It had a green wooden door, tall front windows, and a long oak bar that Grandpa polished every morning.
There was a pool table in the corner with an uneven spot near the left pocket.
The regulars knew about it.
They never told newcomers until someone asked why the ball kept drifting strangely.
But my favorite thing in the entire building stood beside the entrance.
A 1972 Seeburg jukebox.
Chrome across the front.
Honey-colored wooden panels.
A row of little lights that moved from one side to the other while the mechanism selected a record.
I thought it was the most beautiful machine in the world.
Grandpa let me sit at the far end of the bar on Saturday afternoons before the evening crowd arrived.
He’d give me a root beer and a coffee can full of quarters.
My job was to ask customers what they wanted to hear.
Then I’d walk to the jukebox and press the right buttons.
Sometimes people wanted Johnny Cash.
Sometimes Patsy Cline.
Sometimes Elvis.
Grandpa always pretended he didn’t care what played.
But whenever someone selected an old country song, I’d catch him tapping his fingers against the counter.
At the end of the afternoon, he’d hand me whatever quarters were left in the can.
Usually it amounted to a couple of dollars.
I felt like the richest boy in Howard County.
Dot Maryman, who worked behind the bar with Grandpa, called me the house disc jockey.
I didn’t know exactly what that meant.
I just knew the jukebox was mine to look after.
And Grandpa trusted me with it.
My parents had their own history with that machine.
Dad met Mom at Augie’s in 1988.
She had stopped in with friends after a neighborhood celebration.
She wanted to play a particular song, but the jukebox wouldn’t respond when she pressed the button.
Dad was standing nearby.
He offered to help.
According to Mom, he walked over confidently and announced that he knew how to fix anything.
Then he gave the side of the cabinet an impatient tap.
The machine started playing.
Mom laughed.
Dad smiled.
They began talking.
The following year, they were married.
They held their reception in Augie’s back room.
Grandpa loaded the jukebox with seventeen records selected especially for them.
Mom kept the list in the back of their wedding album.
The first song was Anne Murray’s “Could I Have This Dance?”
Whenever Mom told that story, she smiled like she could still hear the music.
I grew up believing the jukebox was part of our family.
Not valuable because it was old.
Not because collectors might pay money for it.
Because it held memories nobody could replace.
Then things changed.
In 2001, Grandpa decided he was ready to retire.
He sold the tavern building and business to Dot.
She’d worked beside him for almost thirty years, knew the customers better than he did, and understood every detail of how the place operated.
Grandpa trusted her completely.
Dot renamed the business Dot’s Tavern.
But the regulars kept calling it Augie’s.
Grandpa didn’t mind.
He made only one unusual condition when he sold the business.
He kept the jukebox.
Then gave it to my father.
Dad moved it into our garage, beside the workbench.
I was six years old.
For months, I sat on an upside-down bucket pressing the buttons with the power switched off.
I loved the little clicking sounds.
I loved imagining the records moving inside.
And I loved knowing that someday, when I was older, Dad might let me open the cabinet and learn how it worked.
Grandpa passed away three years later.
I was nine.
I remember standing at his memorial beside Mom, holding the little metal key he’d used to open the jukebox’s service panel.
Dot had slipped it into my hand after the gathering.
“Your grandpa wanted you to keep this.”
I looked at the key.
Then at her.
“Why?”
She smiled sadly.
“Because you were the only kid he knew who cared more about how the machine worked than how many quarters were inside.”
I carried that key everywhere for weeks.
Eventually, I placed it in a little wooden box in my bedroom.
I still have it.
Two years after Grandpa passed, Dad sold the jukebox.
My younger sister, Kaylee, was eight.
She’d qualified for a competitive dance program in Indianapolis.
There were lessons, costumes, travel expenses, hotel stays, and registration fees.
My parents were proud of her.
I was too.
Kaylee was talented.
She loved performing.
But the costs were more than Dad expected.
One Saturday, a man arrived with a flatbed trailer.
I was eleven.
I watched from the driveway as he and Dad moved Grandpa’s jukebox out of the garage.
The man inspected the cabinet.
Then handed Dad an envelope.
Inside was eleven hundred dollars.
I stood beside the garage door.
“Dad?”
He looked toward me.
“What?”
“Where’s the jukebox going?”