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March 18, 2006
My Saturday Adventure....
Today has proven rather exciting, it started a couple weeks ago when I developed a craving for Bourbon Street Chicken. I found a recipe online, but since I live in Tennessee, it's not quite that easy. In the great state of Tennessee, the availability of alcohol is not a foregone conclusion, in some counties you can buy it in a bottle, but not a glass, in other counties you can purchase it in a glass but not a bottle, and even if it's available in your county in one form or another (or both) it may not be available in your city, depending on the attitude of the voting public. The county I live in hasn't approved liquor stores, and since I don't drink this was not an issue until I needed a bottle of bourbon whiskey for my chicken. I thought I may be able to get around this dilema by unleashing the power of the Internet, but I've learned it's illegal for internet retailers to ship alcohol into Tennessee.
SO last night at work I broke down and asked a group of my co-workers where the closest liquor store was, they gave me a vague set of directions consisting of "Take 12th street down until you come to the stop sign, turn right, there's a little liquor store on the right, you can't miss it". The sun was out, it was a perfect day for a drive, I was hungry, and the directions were so simple anyone could find it, so I headed out of town with visions of perfect Bourbon Street Chicken dancing in my head. I reached the stop sign, turned right and started looking for the store. Every store I passed was a potential suspect, but most of them looked more like convinience stores or thrift shops so I drove on. After several miles I decided I must be the one person in the world who could miss it, so I turned around and went back, almost as far as the stop sign before turning into a convienience store to ask for directions.
Just my luck, the store was closed for a couple hours so the owners could attend a funeral, but a sweet little lady in the parking lot was happy to give me directions (after filling me in on the person who the funeral was being held for, which she was too grief stricken to attend herself). Her directions were "Go back out here, a little bit down, when you come to the bottom of the hill, it's on the right. There's a bunch of little places right there, but one of them's the liquor store." So I set out again, certain I would find it with those directions, and after coming to the bottom of the third or fourth hill and not finding it among the clusters of three or four businesses along the way, I once again backtracked to where I'd spotted a sheriff's deputy tucked away watching the cars go by. Lucky for me, he hadn't found anyone to chase off after, I pulled in along side him, lowered my window, turned down my radio and looked over. "I'm lost, can you help me?"
"I'll try" he said. "I'm looking for a liquor store, isn't that sad?" He was nice enough to say "No ma'am" even though I'm sure he was wondering what kind of looser alcoholic I must be to ask him for directions to a liquor store. "Are you from around here?" he asked, a question which would seem extraneous to most people, especially considering that if I was from around there, I would surely know where the liquor store no one could miss was located, but I know having that piece of information is critical to his ability to give me appropriate directions.
If I'd answered "yes" his directions would have been something like "Well, go down here a bit until you go past ol' farmer so-and-so's place. Course, he died about ten or twelve years back and they sold the place to someone from California or Texas or somewhere. When ya get past there, you'll see the field my mom's uncle used to hay, back before the arthritis in his knees got so bad he couldn't drive the mower anymore, then there's a road on either the left or the right, I can't remember which, but you'll see a house that used to be green, they painted it 3 or 4 years ago, I'm not sure what you'd call the color now. The liquor store is just a sneeze away, on the right." But since my reply was "No, I'm from Cookeville" he knew I would need the "outsider" directions, which were "Go down here about 6 miles, when it turns into a 40 mile an hour zone, go 2/10ths of a mile, and Country Cabin Liquor is there on the right." Finally, I found the store which I hadn't missed after all.
I had no idea what to expect when I walked in, it wasn't my first time in a liquor store, but I felt like a man in the tampon aisle anyway. My eyes glazed over as I stared at the wall of bottles with labels bearing the words "Bourbon Whiskey", how on earth would I know which one was best for my purposes? Finally I just grabbed one that wasn't too high priced, and headed toward the front of the store. Then in a stroke of inspiration, I thought I should also get a bottle of red wine for making Ropa, everyone says it's much better with regular wine than cooking wine (which I normally use because it IS available in my county). I wandered among the aisles of wine trying to figure out what was what, eventually deciding to just give up and go home, then wandering some more waiting for a creepy patron to leave. I thanked the girl for carding me, took my bottle of bourbon and left with visions of perfect Bourbon Street Chicken, once again, dancing in my head.
Posted by Anna at March 18, 2006 5:25 PM
Comments
Anna, this is so funny! The next time you come to Virginia, we'll have a field trip to the ABC store! I had to go there a few days before Christmas to get brandy for french onion soup. I stupidly assumed that I could pick that up at Kroger along with my cheap red and white wine for Ropa and Chicken a la Crock Pot. (And yes, Ropa is so much better with real wine!) I made a mad dash for the entrance while praying that nobody I knew saw me. The store was packed with old, stinky fat men stocking up for the holidays. Must be the saddest place on earth. Anyway, I picked up a few airline bottles of brandy, enough for a few batches of soup. I've made the soup so many times that in January I broke down and bought the BIG bottle! I'm on the way to having a well-stocked "flashlight" cabinet. Thank you, Jack Velzen.
Posted by: Gloria at April 6, 2006 11:26 AM