Field Trip

Yesterday, I ran an errand that sort of made me feel like an eighteen year-old again. I drove over the state line to buy liquor. Only this time I wasn’t trying to circumvent the drinking age in my home state…I was just looking to stock up my liquor cabinet for the holidays without having to take out a loan.

Back in the olden days, when we lived in Chicagoland, you could just drive down to the Jewel and throw a bottle of whiskey in your cart, along with your milk and frozen peas. Or, there were always the gigantic free-standing liquor stores, that were the size of small department stores, if you really needed to load up. Prices were kept dirt cheap by virtue of the fact that the stores were all competing for your liquor buck.

Out here in Oregon we have state liquor stores, which carry a small, prescribed inventory of hooch, charge outlandish prices that are set by state regulation, and close at 8pm sharp. And you can forget buying liquor on Sundays. They seem to think that they are saving us from ourselves—if the stuff is hard to come by, we won’t indulge our lust for demon rum. However, you can buy all the beer or wine you want at the 24-hour grocery store down the street. So we are a state of beer-a-holics and winos.

There is a state liquor store about a mile from my house, but I decided to investigate the prices on the other side of the river, in Washington. So I loaded the dog in the car and went on a field trip. You have to drive about thirty miles one way to get to the closest bridge over the Columbia, but it’s a lovely drive this time of year, and it’s not like I have a day-planner full of other important appointments. I did a map-quest thing for directions to the closest liquor store…even so, I managed to drive around Longview for about 45 minutes before I finally found the place. It turned out that Washington has state-run liquor stores as well…but the prices were somewhat more believable. Of course, if you add the cost of the gas I burned getting there and back, I probably didn’t save a sous. Oh well.

The sun came out, and I got to enjoy the fall colors on the drive.  (I could have kicked myself for forgetting my camera.) Also found a beautiful park in Longview that runs along about six blocks in the older section of town. I think it’s built alongan old mill race…it had a lovely expanse of glass-like water running through the middle of it, anyway. And bright-robed trees leaning over the water primping at their reflections. And, oddly, every other building along the way was a church. I started out admiring a building that was half red brick and half dark stained wood, with arched doorways and an alpine-looking roofline, that turned out to be the First Christian Church. Two doors down was the Lutheran Church, and then another church, and another. The crowning glory was a gorgeous light brick building that held a huge square bell tower against the blue of the autumn sky. I was thinking it must be a monastery or some kind of Catholic edifice. Above the great wood door, etched in the stone, it said "Community Church." I would have loved to learn the history of that building. It didn’t look like any community church I’ve ever seen.

Dog and I took the tour through about half of this wonderful park. For some reason, it spoke to me of my roots in the midwest. Must have been all the brick…you really don’t see that much brick construction out here in the west. A pang of homesickness struck my heart…in my mind’s eye, I could see the pond glazed with ice, surrounded by snowdrifts, and covered with skaters. I do love living in the Pacific Northwest, but it does lack a certain "Currier & Ives" quality this time of year…