Stamped: November 28th, 2006 | Toggle Similar
Tagged: dates of yore.

I grew up in a small town 30 miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. There's a town square and a festival every spring. There are lots of antique shops and American flags and Bush signs are proudly displayed on most front lawns. The house I spent my formative years in has had icicle Christmas lights hanging from the eaves since my freshman year of college. I am now 25. My dad says it's easier to keep them up. I have a very traditional, very Southern family. They are into Jesus, outlet malls and Mary Kay parties. I love living in New York, but with Christmastime fast approaching, I'm looking forward to going home and slowing down the pace a bit. Which brings me to the story I'd like to relate now. It's a story that happened last Christmas and it involves my Southern family and the great town of McDonough, Georgia. Here it goes:

My family's Christmas tradition is as follows: Breakfast at my mom's mom's or at one of my mom's sister's places. Early afternoon dinner at my dad's mom's. Late dinner/appetizers and snacks at my mom's mom's. On this particular year year we had appetizers at my cousin Kari's house.

So, it's Christmas night and we realize that because my cousin is slightly dense at times, we only have ONE BOTTLE OF RUM. New York has turned me into a complete alcoholic so this liquor situation was a detriment to my well-being. Unfortunately, it's Christmas Day and it's a Sunday. So that's two problems: You can't buy alcohol on Sundays in McDonough or anywhere in Georgia and even if you could it was Christmas effing Day and there's precious few Non-Christmas-Celebrators where I come from so everything was closed anyway.

My cousin's solution? "We'll just go to the liquor house."

"The what?" I reply.

"In McDonough, girl, the liquor house. You wanna drive?"

My head was a little cloudy from two pina coladas.

"What is this? Prohibition?" I ask.

Kari gives me a look which says, "Stop it with the academic terms asshole."

This is me on Christmas.

So we load up my car and head to the infamous Liquor House. Now I need to let you in on the cast of characters for this merry adventure.

Brandy: The Nervous Driver. Never has done well on roads at night when other cars are present
Kari: The Instigator. Also completely ghetto fabulous. Once told a man she met at a bar that if she'd known she'd be meeting someone that fine, she would have worn her good weave.
Walter and Alan: Kari's cousins on her dad's side. Think Cosby sweaters and Georgetown. The New Black Man. Very clean cut and soap scrubbed. But definitely sporting Cosby sweaters and BAs from prestigious universities.

So we're all cruising down to the Liquor House in my dad's nice new car and Kari is giving directions. "All right y'all," Kari says. "Just let me do the talking. Y'all talk too white and I'm not trying to get my ass kicked on Christmas right now."

The first driveway we pull into is completely empty. The house is shuttered and I notice that there may or may not be yellow tape on the front door.

"Is that police tape?" asks Walter. "That definitely looks like police tape."

"Okay, Bran. Just back on out like we're turning around. No sudden movements," is Kari's reply.

My heart is going about a million miles a second and my buzz is killed. We sit silently in the car waiting for movement from the darkened house. Finally Kari says, "Well I guess we'll have to go over to the projects."

Off to the projects we go. For those of you who are too upper middle class to know about the projects, know this: They are never a place one wants to travel to after dark while driving a new car and wearing her new pair of $150 jeans.

We get to an apartment in the projects and I am instructed to keep the car running. Kari goes in to do the talking and emerges five minutes later with a large black man in tow. He gets into a white van that's in the driveway and she comes back to the car.

"That's Eddie. We're gonna follow him."

So I follow the stranger in the white van and I find myself turning off the main road and FUCK ME, we're following him down a winding dirt road. He parks and I leave my car running. We are now in a clearing that logistically is only minutes away from my dad's house, yet I have never seen it before. About twenty cars are parked haphazardly around. There's a large barn in the middle of the clearing and I can hear music playing and people talking. Suddenly it's not Christmas 2005, it's Christmas 1925, I am a sharecropper and my story will one day be told in The Color Purple.

Kari enlists Alan to come inside with her. Walter immediaely takes out his Treo phone and starts texting.

"Put that UP!!" I tell him. "We are not about to get fucked up over your phone!"

After what seemed like hours, Kari and Alan come back with four small styrofoam cups. "Two dark, two light," Kari says and I think, we came all this way for wine? Then my car is immediately filled with the pungent smell of gin and Hennessy. We proceed to drive back to her house, open containers in tow.

Two funny things about this story: I don't like gin OR Hennessy. And when Alan got back in the car he says "Hey, I knew this guy in there. We used to play Little League together but apparently now he's a crackhead and he has five kids. Can you believe it? Five kids!"

So that's the story of last Christmas Day and the Liquor House. Living the city life, sometimes I forget that everything I need isn't readily available by delivery 24 hours a day. It's nice to be reminded though. Even if the reminder involves a trip to a Liquor House where for a good three to five minutes, I was fearing for my well-being.

Last 5 posts by Brandy

• Hell House - November 9th, 2007
• 36 going on 11 - October 9th, 2007
• College was a good time. - September 25th, 2007
• I'm the easiet girl ever to break up with - September 18th, 2007
• Christmas Lights - August 28th, 2007