Late-Night Liquor Stocking / Drive-Thru DWIs

DATE: Sunday, July 31, 2005
PLACE: Schnucks grocery store
CAST OF CHARACTERS: Me, Jason, Rick Williams, Officer Turtle


We're grocery shopping, me and my roommate Jason, around three in the morning. I stayed home tonight to review a batch of music videos for my eMpTyV blog, and Jason didn't get home from work at the piano bar until a half-hour ago.

To both our body clocks, it's about suppertime right now, and we're both stuffing the cart like we haven't eaten in a week.

We turn a corner and run into a friend of ours, liquor manager Rick Williams. The name might ring a bell - as anyone who's frequented the Maryland Heights Schnucks during normal business hours can tell you, you'll hear so many "Rick Williams, phone call, line one" intercom pages you'd think he was a high-powered executive.

Right now, though, Rick has on a monstrous pair of headphones, and he's bent down to yank all the yellow-and-blue sale-price stickers from the second-to-bottom shelf of the premium liquor cabinet.

We stop and talk to him for ten or fifteen minutes - Jason used to work as a checker and formed a bond with Rick, and not just because he rendered an almost omnipotent power over the store's booze supply. I've talked with Rick several times, and he's usually lively and hilarious in that "make fun of everyone as form of affection" sort of way.

Tonight he's not his normal self, and Jason and I soon find out why. Rick's dad, who's in his mid-seventies, is in the hospital with cancer. Rick has come in to work early to get the price sticker changeover done by five a.m., at which time he's off to the hospital. His dad is going into surgery today, and things aren't looking promising. The cancer is kicking dad's ass.

I never know what to say in situations like this except the usual apologies and expressions of regret. I watched my grandpa get taken down by cancer a few years ago in an almost unbelievably fast progression of deterioration. It was horrible to watch, but Grandpa was 90 - and he was my grandfather, not my father. Rick's situation has to be several times worse to deal with.

I start to stare at the lower shelves of the unlocked high-end liquor cabinet, watching Williams switch out one set of sale-price stickers for a new set of very similarly priced stickers. None of the discounts are substantial - Rick finally cracks a smile when I ask if they really move a lot more bottles of Johnny Walker Blue when they go on special from $217.99 to $214.49.

I notice the yellow-and-blue "look that this bargain" sticker under the bottles of Cabo Wabo tequila actually sports a higher price than the one it's supposed to undercut. The sale price is a buck more. I point it out to Rick, and he mutters, "Goddamn idiots," under his breath.

As Rick fixes the computer error, he tells us the story of the marketing department's brilliant idea to drop the price of 20-ounce bottles of Pepsi products by a penny and advertise via big point-of-purchase display signs that customers could save one cent.

We all kind of chuckle, and for a brief second Rick's mind is off his dad's ailing health.

--

As I wheel the cart back to the return bin, I notice a familiar member of the Maryland Heights Police Department. He's in his early sixties, bald save a gray buzz-cutted rim, and I've always thought he looked like a turtle.

In November 2001, returning home from a concert, Officer Turtle gave my good friend Keith a DWI. I got away scot free after a truly half-assed search of the car failed to turn up the one-hitter I'd stashed under the passenger seat.

Keith told me the next day that it took the cop about a half hour to fill out a single-page booking report. While Keith sat next to his desk, cuffed to a bench, the cop squinted through reading glasses, pecked at the typewriter keys and even recorded the wrong date on the report. Keith said as drunk as he was, he was still so impatient with Officer Turtle that he wanted to break out of the handcuffs and finish up the report himself.

The cop is carrying two plastic bags of groceries. Kind of under my breath, I whisper to Jason that he's the one who busted Keith three and a half years back. Jason watches Officer Turtle struggle to open the passenger seat on his cop car. "Keith shoulda ran," my roommate remarks.

"Hey," Jason says, "we should tell him he busted our friend."

"Yeah, that'll guarantee we don't get followed home."

"I'm sober, you're sober, my car has all its tail lights. I'm gonna tell him," he continues, in a low voice. "He'd totally think it was funny."

"He didn't seem to have much of a sense of humor when he made our friend press his finger to his nose while standing on one foot in the cold rain," I say. "And, I mean, that's a pretty funny sight no matter who you are."

"I'm telling him." And he shifts body language, takes a step toward the cop. "Excuse me?"

Turtle slowly cranes his neck in our direction, says nothing.

"You gave a buddy of ours a DWI a few years back." He says it in that kind of, Hey, isn't the world a funny place? inflection.

"Got another one tonight," the officer says. "A hit and run - some guy smashed into a parked car while he was leaving Syberg's at closing time."

I used to drink at Syberg's every Thursday night. It's a chain restaurant/bar right up the street.

"I found him five minutes later," Officer Turtle continues. "He was in the White Castle drive thru."

I decide the cop has a sense of humor after all. And we don't even get followed home.