ADVENTURES IN REDNECKERY PRESENTS... DRIVE-THRU

first, a lil' music to set th' mood... Schroder??

Back in the mists of time, circa 1987, I was given a coffee mug in deep, azure blue by a friend of mine with the legend "I [HEART] FRIDAYS!" I thanked the giver a great deal, but in my heart I wasn't in the same mood the giver was in because i so often WORKED on weekends, especially in high school when I was on the opening shift of the breakfast crew of McDonald's and frequently set my alarm for 3:00 AM so I could be up and out the door by 4:30'ish and there @ the store by 5 AM for a 6 AM opening. I did this weekly for over two years, and MOST of my working life WAS on the weekends.

Here I am, forty and a 1/2 years old, and I STILL find myself workin' weekends, especially saturdays, so Friday doesn't necess. hold the no-holes-barred appeal for me that it might for other workin' stiffs. While everyone else (including my daugther, thankee) is up until 4 AM burnin' the midnight oil online or at the pub (or wherever else folken find themselves these days), it's not at all unusual to STILL find me hitting the hay somewhat early in the evenink. Maybe I've just gotten old and boring...

But tonight things were different, Constant Readers. The other day I had successfully navigated my way through the legal system and dodged a bullet or two, shot at me from the gun of a debt collector. Ages ago my ex and I had a credit card that we maxxed out when I was unemployed and then... well, just never got 'round to paying for. They sued me, surprise suprise, and despite all sorts of sob stories about working for $9/hr and most of my disposable income going to child support, it was apparently deemed necessary that I go to City Hall and go before a judge to stand a pre-trial and to see just how much cash they could squeeze out of the withered husk that is the man I stand before you now as.

Fortunately, we were over and settled with before we even set foot in the judge's chamber, but suffice to say it's been a stressful week. I had bought myself (and my love, who shares my taste for beer) a 4 pack of Guinness Draught as a treat for a Job Well Done the day of the trial and I came home from a long day @ the office of being yelled at ("you're customer service, therefore you're where the rubber meets the road," my TrooLuv told me th' other day*) and quaffed the can in all but one slough...

then I had an Icehouse... Then another...

I was feeling mellow and good, my TrooLuv having made me a plate of s(n)ausages, kraut and mashed 'taters for dinner, and naturally, being male, I realized that this being Friday it would be Good and True to CONTINUE this mellow feeling. We were in need of smokes and more beer.

"I'd send you out for something, but you're weaving already," said she, draped on the bed as the PC fired itself up for her to begin attacking her online homework assignment. I agreed that I was probably already o'er the legal limit and to venture forth in HER wheels would be a dangerous and idiotic move. "AAAAH," I purred, "but I CAN walk."

Off I set, on foot, for the local drive-thru, a place that doesn't have the greatest selection but DOES, at the very least, sell relatively cheap alcohol and tobacco (at least on one side, the other is stocked with coolers of soda). I passed a vehicle I've never seen actually GO anywhere with the orange and red "party plates" for those convicted of DUI's in Ohio, and chuckled to myself. I am not an owner of a motorized vehicle, and I am too intelligent (in this sphere, at least) to drive in my current state. Besides, I'm blessed to live w/in a block or two of a drive thru.

I don't know if YOUR state has these things or if it's strictly an OH deal, but a drive through is a low, concrete building w/two rolling doors @ either end and a series of coolers on either side and some grizzled, poor, broken-down sot working the register. One drives through in their car and can pick up beer, wine, soda or chips and cigarettes (or all of the above) at low prices. For those of us like the man who owned the car w/the party plates (or those like me who own NO car and can't stay upright on a bike after three beers), you can also WALK though them.

Which is what I just did about 1/2 an hour ago. I put on my walkin' shoes and stepped out of the Manour to the local drive thru. Once there, I spent some time admiring the different beers through their door/windows like fishes in aquarium, trying to select which ones to take home the way a diner at a fancy restaurant might eyeball a tank of lobsters. Around me was the pungent reek of car exhaust, the babble of teens too young to buy anything hard but who would buy soda with the severity of one casually pulling a bottle of grape Mad Dog 20/20 off the shelf to hide in a paper bag, and a surprisingly young boy who, no doubt, was the son of the dude working there, who was attempting to seem like he was world-weary and above all of this nonsense, even at the age of 8.

WALKING into a drive thru to purchase beer marks one almost immediately. I don't OWN a car, but in the eyes of everyone who saw me they immediately decided I DID have one and it had red and orange plates on the front and the back. Why ELSE would a grown man WALK into a drive-through on a Friday night, after all?? I could feel eyes burning into my back as I stood there with my cans of Steel Reserve (my drink of choice since about 2005) an' just smiiillled.

After all... its FRIDAY!!



*"Wait! I never said that in my life!" said my TrooLuv, standing at my shoulder. I smiled to myself, knowing that Poetic License rules the Zymurgy world...