A (quirky) day in the life.
And a stroll through it, as themes repeat. Count ’em. While Goin’ Downtown …
First stop these days is always the drug store. No not for that, or verily those, reasons. As in the new year it’s back a few years to the future, since we have always been dealing with chronic shipping and supply shortages of even (sorta basic?) things like obscure vitamins. So get 37 or 23 tablets of your 60-pill prescription, then try back a few days later for the rest.
The wait had been much more than a minute, as the main filler of pills — he jokingly calls himself a pillar of society — worked away with his blade-like counting device in front of the four aisles that constitute the Command Center, shelves stacked high up to the ceiling. Hence I, this astronaut, said he’d quit gaping at the encapsulated garlic and other funky herbs, and the funny sign from the complaint department that shows a hand grenade and says take a number, and get in line, on its pull-pin, better to walk on down the way for my OJ, then double back.
There was no one manning the local art gallery, Picasso took another day off — he’s never there when you need him and Van Gogh after rethinking it is always looking for that other piece of his ear — and no shoppers were taking at the cannabis dispensary, despite a wordy sign that hawked among other things, products that were some combination of the terms flower and ear, wax and bud. Maybe Van Gogh should try there.
As Ziggy’s slowly becomes the new Max’s music venue, its newly purchased Hop N Barrel location just up the street was cleaned-out empty, save lots of stools stacked by the windows and the conversion status of a barren electrical panel. The middle of the main building, amidst dinner diners and their salads, showed bare tacked-up plywood decking out a window view.
At the intersection with Wisconsin Street, four people in dark suits and color otherwise shirts walked three paces apart in Abbey Road style, legs displayed astride, with various sizes of dogs leading them. Earlier, I had spied in an intersection back at the other section of town, a John Lennon look-alike carring a guitar case along with his Yoko Ono-resembling girlfriend.
Then with a single OJ in hand — purchased at a reasonable price of just under $6, although the wallet would not open promptly and release its credit cards, too many — I headed back up the street to the pharmacy. The front counter was again being clerked by no one, and back at the back one, I was tempted to make like James Dean and take a rebel chug of my jug.
Back home, in the life.
I checked the mailbox and saw a card from my Milwaukee-area niece. Odd I thought, a thank you note sent for my Christmas-present cheap red stocking hat? Uhm no, this was a save-the-date wedding invite. A friend motioned to me and said what, no gloves being worn in this cold, and I responded I had to quick trek back to retrieve my wallet I’d forgotten at the pharmacy, like my head on Mars, where some courteous Martians had prompted me, while adding on the sly that, while leaning away from the doorway, I should tell no one, as I would not be believed.
I retold the joke to the clerk and botched it, adding that for those like me, there was some extra good stuff behind the Command Center. She looked puzzled, then smiled gingerly, unlike the friend who laughed hard.
Again, a day in the life. And not in the record store.