Yesterday I was sent by my friend the gourmand to the super-snooty wine store to purchase some Fronch elixir from a region he called Boojilly, specifically some village that, I think he said, has a million vans. This being California, I of course go in a pair of shorts and my trusty Oakland A's ballcap, just like I would to church. Anyway, I walk in after having locked up my bike and I find one of the attendants. He looks like he's guarding a Da Vinci cartoon, and has been eyeing me nastily from the second my flip-flops flapped over the threshold. I manage to make myself understood well enough that he gives me what appears to be the right juice; I was told to look for a picture of a windmill, and lo and behold, this had one. I saw it and began to clap with delight. He didn't even try to make me feel comfortable about that! The snob. Anyway, after we get to the register--as I hand him my credit card--he IDs me. I couldn't believe it.

Do I not look like I should be buying fine wine? The nerve!

--CS


[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited June 22, 2006).]

Jennifer, I'd card you. Clay, I don't know. I had an author photo to prepare me for Reeser, and I was unprepared. Last carded in earnest at the old Denver airport when I was circa thirty. Told the barman, "If this bar weren't so wide, I'd lean over and kiss you."

Now I'm carded everytime I buy smokes. North Dakota has decreed it. Ole geezer is wheeled into store, sneezes, blowing out dentures and blowing off toupee, and gets carded. This is my home state's revenge for the "ageism" which has been justifiably decried on what used to be my board at the Sphere.

Tim, if you'd quit using that henna rinse you wouldn't get carded.

...so I deftly pulled my driver's license from the side pouch of my new, black West Chester satchel, from between multiple copies of those phenomenal poems of mine, "Useful Advice," and "Keeping My Name." The guy examined it, nodded, then handed it back -- "Thanks," he said. "And you have a good one, Ms. Tufariello..."

Gee, thanks, Jennifer! Unfortunately, it’s been a while for me. Must have had the wrong West Chester bartender.

Even after (reluctantly) returning Sam’s books, I ended up with a nice stash--including Menashe, Fenton (the book of song lyrics and two books of prose), Gioia’s Nosferatu, the Powow anthology, Jarman’s The Secret of Poetry, and probably one or two more I can’t remember at the moment. Between the purchased books and the freebies I nabbed in the lobby (not from other people’s bags… no, really…. I mean from the tables with sample journals and so forth), my suitcase swelled far beyond its original overhead bin dimensions. A conference veteran soon learns that one must bring to West Chester a suitcase, if not clothes, that can be let out.