"You can die in the hospital or you can die at home. Take your pick." With those words the doctor diagnosed Dewayne Ak*ns with terminal lung cancer. At the time of his diagnosis, Dewayne weighed 180 pounds. He died six months later at the home of his parents, Bob and Della Ak*ns, weighing a frail 108 pounds at the age of thirty-four.
When I met the Ak*ns in March of 1996, two months after the death of their son, they invited me into their home and told me their story. Owners of the Ak*ns Garage in Sentinel for over thirty years, the domed, tin and stucco building with U.S. Royal Tires signs now stands amidst a pervasive hush. I liked the Ak*ns right away; sincere, hard-working people, I saw the loss in their eyes, and I listened.
"We raised all our children through that shop," Della began. "It kept us a goin'. We never went hungry, never went without. We never got rich," she added laughing. "But I told 'em if we had God, we was richer than anybody."
When I entered the Ak*ns' home, I immediately noticed that it bore an uncanny resemblance to my Granny's house; the brown, sculpted carpeting and the wood-framed country sofa printed with brown wagon wheels and wildflowers spoke to me of Papa Louie and Granny. As I peered into the dining room, I noticed that their furniture was identical to Granny's. Portraits of the Ak*ns' children and grandchildren, taken mostly from the late 1950's through the mid '70's, hung on the wood-paneled walls of the living room and reminded me of the portraits hanging in Granny's house; only the faces were different, yet somehow, they too, were the same.
The Ak*ns continued to tell me about their business, once the most successful garage in Sentinel. Both of their sons, Dewayne and John, worked for the family garage, and Bob planned to hand it down to them when he retired. But a few years ago, the first of a series of disasters struck the Ak*ns. John, their eldest son, worked part time in trash collection in addition to working at the garage. On that day, John caught his arm in a trash compactor. No longer able to work on cars or at the sanitation department, he has not worked since.
Bob, now 73, retired from the garage in January shortly after the death of Dewayne. "I put it off as long as I could, but I'm sick and 73 years old, and I think I've done my part!" he told me. "Like I say, a man cain't just sit around, he gotta have somethin' to mess with." Bob would still work if he could, but two years ago, doctors diagnosed him with Parkinson's disease. He continued to work as long as possible, but when his long-time customers learned of his disease and the unsteady quiver it caused in his hands, they took their business elsewhere. With no customers left, and no one to take over the family business, the Ak*ns Garage now stands lifeless, fading in the harsh Oklahoma sun.
"I had a cousin from California who come by the garage, back there when we was goin' full blast," Bob said. "He said, 'Boy, you shore gotta good deal there, them two boys helpin' you an' you got that there garage. You shore gotta good deal.' I guess it was a pretty good deal back then, you know," he said smiling. "But things don't last forever, now do they?"
