Thursday, October 18, 2012

Why I don't like to drink beer

I imagine that isn't entirely true. I have had my share of beer, mostly because it was what was available, but I don't particularly care for it. I can't appreciate the variances in taste, or color, or "body", (whatever the hell that means.)
I've never really been a wine drinker either. Tried to develop a taste for it, but meh. So much of it is dry, and bitter and just so unpleasant, it just never caught on with me.  I've always preferred the fruity "girl drinks". Things with fruit skewered on plastic swords, or little umbrellas, or hey, why not both? And in a coconut cup while we're at it!
I also am a bit like the men who go to the bar in Potterville, where they serve hard liquor for men who like to get drunk fast. Vodka on diet coke works just fine.
But what I LIKE to drink isn't what this is about, This is a little tale I recall from my childhood that made me a bit of a snob when it comes to ones choice of alcoholic beverage.

I was living with my Fat Aunts in the south. I say that like a title, because it will be one day. When I was a kid, all but one or two of my aunts was heavy. Big strong women, pull plow when horse gets tired! Good Irish stock. Tall too, most of them.
 But anyway, I must have been around 10 or 11 and my Aunt gets a call from her wayward daughter. Her only daughter, who had dropped out of high school, had two babies before she figured out what caused that, and lived a wild and rowdy lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Well. At least sex and drugs.
My wild cousin had woken up alone in a distant hotel room with no money and no means of transportation and needed rescue.
Now, leaving the farm for any reason was a thrill, since it didn't happen too much. Especially in the summer. Mamaw was going to town? We all wanted to go too! Who knew, she might go through the bank and we'd get suckers, or a candy bar from a gas station or something!
So my cousins, three of them, stair step ages downward from my own by two years each tumbled into the back of her giant Ford station wagon. All of us barefoot and dirty from running around in the freedom of a summer 20 miles out of town on a dirt road in Mississippi.
We pulled into a hotel parking lot and were disappointed to find out we had to wait in the car, and we whined a little bit til Auntie gave us the eyes that said her shoe was about to find our asses and we settled down to wait.
She went in and about 10-15 minutes later, (FOREVER!) she came out with my cousin in tow, and the sun shined down on her in a harsh, unforgiving light.
You could see a good inch and half of dark brown hair roots creating a break in the brassy, nearly broken blond hair, straggled as straw, her heavy, stretched marked breasts hanging low in her overstretched, soiled tube top that showed an unattractive expanse of flabby, stretch marked belly hanging over her unbuttoned, cut off daisy duke shorts. Home made of course, and cut so short the pockets showed.
Her bare feet were dirty almost to her knees with mud, dirt and some bruises as well. She carried a pair of wooden platform sandals with long leather laces over her shoulder and her face looked puffy and pale and like it might slide off at any moment.
Like an over-eager pup pack we welcomed her and asked her questions in a jumble to which she turned around to look at us in the back seat, her face scrunched with annoyance and probably a wholloping headache and belched out, "Shut the hell up!" in her beery voice.
I thought in that moment. I'm never gonna drink beer.

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