Grocery Boy: Vignettes and Adventure Stories
Author talk, music, and book signing
Thursday, December 5, 2024, 7pm
With Bobby Driver
In case you missed it . . .
Bobby Driver brought the house down with his entertaining mix of storytelling, music, local history, and comedy! Check out his Grocery Boy “performance” on our YouTube channel. Pick up your copy of “Grocery Boy” in the Rocktown History bookstore!
Between 1965 and 1991 there was a supermarket, Mick-or-Mack, located on the corner of East Wolfe Street and Mason Street in Harrisonburg’s Northeast section. In 1971, the author, Bobby Driver, began employment there as a thirteen-year-old bagger and was there when the store was sold in 1991. In that twenty-year span, Bobby was treated to some hilarious and sometimes harrowing experiences that have become inspiration and source material for his novel, “Grocery Boy: Vignettes and Adventure Stories.”
In this novel, individual stories are woven into the arc of a fictional account of the adventures of a young bagger, Jamison Hardy whose life loosely reflects that of the author. While ninety-five percent of the stories in the work are based in true stories, the book augments and reshuffles the incidents that were their inspiration, and the names of individuals have been blurred and changed to protect the reputations of those involved. The names of streets and landmarks remain basically the same although Harrisonburg reverts to its old name, Rocktown, and the store’s name is changed to “Rock-a-Mack.” The story also veers sideways into segments of the music scene in the area at that time and there the names of individuals for the most part remain factual.
This book was written mainly to fulfill the wishes of some residents of the town who had read short, factual versions of the tales in the “Remembering Downtown Harrisonburg” Facebook group, and while poignant in places, it is mostly a wry and comedic view of the life on that side of town, complete with all the eccentrics, weirdos and ne’er-do-wells that populated that area at the time.
The author, a musician and songwriter, has used some of the events and attitudes of the story as subject matter for a few songs that he has recorded or performed over the years, and a few of them will be performed in conjunction with the talk.