"Time to go..."

   I have not even seen a copy of "Lassie Come Home" since I read it in about the third or fourth grade,  but I still remember the unrest I felt when the country-traversing Lassie, seemingly comfortably adopted along the way into a new home, would feel the pull of devotion.  Every evening at 4:00 o'clock, she would grow restless and need to get underway in her journey. The boy would get out of school at that time, and she, ever faithful, would meet him there to walk him home.  "Time to go, time to go for the boy"  would urge her to leave her newly found comfort and get her back on the road to find the home and child she had been cruelly taken from.
    For the last few years of my childhood, all of my teen aged years, and several years into my twenties, I would feel that same pull of having to be in a certain spot. at a designated time.  In my case, it was Sara's store, across the porch from where I lived.  The time was 10 minutes to 6, every evening, 7 days a week.  Ever since Jack died, Sara had to have someone man the store while she went home to eat, and for most of that time, the someone was me.  The store was open from 10:00 A.M to 10:00 P.M. seven days a week, and was never closed for vacation.  I worked there afternoons also, on weekends and during the days when school was out, at 1:00 P.M., so the pull of time was not quite so strong as at 10 of 6.
    Even now, all those years later, as evening closes in, I still get a vague feeling of  having forgotten something, of something left undone,