A day in the liquor store

Our small town of Kirksville, Missouri is made up of many things from half-crazed elderly ladies talking to themselves at the Hy-Vee cafe to various college-related parades in which the cloak of "college town feel" is brought out to dry. But a noticeable part of Kirksville exists in its alcohol consumers, college and blue collar alike.

I'm not necessarily the type to hang out in a liquor store all day...
but there comes a time when you have nothing else to do. And it just so happens that I had a friend who worked at Westport Liquor store, the creme between Kirksville's hospital and the dingier neighborhoods that encroach Truman State University.

For as long as I've lived in Kirksville as a college student, I've felt the tension between liberal college student and working class Kirksvillian. While working in Hy-Vee's meat department as a meat wrapper, I heard my coworkers comment on those "gay college kids" and how they're "perverted" and "wrong." I've been talked down to by Walmart dressing room attendants who chastise our "sinful" ways whenever the next PRISM dance approaches.

I've never truly understood this great divide, but I've tried for four years to figure out why Kirksville was the college town without the college feel.

And so on a lazy Saturday afternoon, I walked into Westport Liquor, easily distinguishable as a college student with my studious gaze and purple pride glow to observe my fellow town's members at a location where one cannot hide their habits.

The first person to enter the low lit, alcohol-lined store was a gentleman in his late 40s. I use the word 'gentleman' loosely since he had the appearance of a man who never actually used the term in his life. He swaggered in with a coating of dirt over his clothes and camouflage hunting cap and said "a pack of Marlboro" to my friend Jess, the diligent vice seller, as he counted all the change in his wallet. He gave me a wink and handed Jess his money. A pennies and quarters exchange. He walked out and a lady in a hurry rushed in and bee-lined for an aisle as if she knew the layout in her sleep.

She was dressed in a tight fitting t-shirt that showed every roll and curve of her body. "Chica" on the front of her shirt in rhinestones. She walked quickly to the register, where we were standing and glanced out the window to her rusting white Beretta where a little girl with uneven pigtails looked back from the front seat. "Just the 'Beam?" my friend asked. The woman nodded, paid, and left as quickly as she came. After she left, Jess turned to me and explained that the woman came in every day to buy alcohol and once accidentally left her "eviction notice" on the counter.

While there was a lull in customers, Jess told me about the man who came in several nights before, so drunk that he went to the bathroom on the floor, between the refridgerated beers and coctail mixers section. Or the numerous times she's felt uncomfortable while waiting on some male who stares for too long or tells her too much information about his life as a construction worker and how nice she'd look sitting in his '98 Ford Pick-Up. She'd look real nice.

I thought about the people who had come into Hy-Vee, only able to buy the saran wrapped cheese that our meat department put out especially for food stamp customers. I smelled the distinct smell of encrusted body odor as they leaned in to ask how much a porterhouse steak would cost, knowing they wouldn't be able to get it. Were they like the man who spent his last penny on a pack of cigarrettes?

I thought of my meat department co-worker who was pregnant and only working a few days a week while her abusive boyfriend worked for minimum wage as a hotel clerk down the street. And just the other day was seen at My Bar taking shots and smoking. Was she to be the alcoholic mother that left her daughter outside while she fed her addiction?

Was this the effect that poverty had on small towns?

College towns like Lawrence and Columbia have drunken frat guys getting trashed on the weekends. And so do we, granted they may have excellent vocabulary in the process. But Kirksville does not have 24 hour diners to prove its college loyalty. We chased out the only "vintage" clothing shop in town leaving Christian charity thrift stores where toothless women scavenge for a sequined Christmas sweater. We only have one true college-like coffee shop, a sign that this most certainly is not a college town. Our sense of community has a dual relationship.

There's Truman State University. And there's everybody else.

For some, Kirksville has division and resentment between those that come in with their liberal thinking and "loose morals" and those that would rather Kirksville be a retirement home for the country Catholics and blue collar employees whose Hollister jobs are being outsourced. College kids are the nuisances voting in their elections and politicizing their town only to leave in four years for jobs that pay twice the amount of money they make. Yet, we also support their economy. And so this cycle of love hate continues.

I found evidence of this when I thought back to the summer I stayed in Kirksville to work. Everyone at Wal-Mart, the social center of small town life, smiled and said "hello." People looked happy. The permanent residents had control of their own town. Yet, there was no money to be made with the rest of Truman gone. And I felt the tension grow and the looks turn more disdainful as August approached and Walgreens put out its "Welcome Truman Students" sign. The demoralizers were back. And I was just another college student.

Thinking of this daunting information, I sighed with relief when I saw the next customers come in. An elderly couple buying wine for their anniversary dinner. They were followed by two frat guys buying a 24-pack of Budweiser.

Ah, familiar territory. Something I understand.