People here wear their underwear on top of their clothes. Teeth are a thing of the past.  iPhones proliferate despite the fact that there is no cell tower near here and very little, if any, reception.

A stop at the local grocery store-cum-gas station is always a rich experience. If it is gas you want, you can get all you want for just under 25% over market price – betta than milk, which is slightly over that percentage.

A stop in the store (I was buying $2 worth of gas so I could get out of here) and I waited in a line of 7 people – not unusual, but it was 6:30 A.M. and I was trying to get to work. The folks ahead of me, some in shorts, one in a bathing suit, two in pajamas, and yet another in a long winter coat that made me wonder if she was wearing anything underneath. ( I must have been staring absent mindedly, and she turned around and smiled at me. No teeth at all! But a lot of mascara and black, black hair. Very Goth in a sort of futuristic “Spice Girls” way…NOT.)

What were they buying? Why was I waiting at 6:30 AM to buy gas to go to work behind this gang of locals? They had important purchases to make and haggling to do. The guy in front was arguing with the woman at the desk about why he couldn’t just get 50 cents worth of gas…and he also wanted to know if she liked his new Tat. When he finally moved on – after getting change for a $20 to buy the gas, the next person just wanted Lottery tickets. After the purchase, they stood at the counter in front of the line, and asked for something to scratch off the tickets – and then stood there, blocking the rest of us, and scratched off the tickets. She won $5 on one ticket and then wanted to collect the ticket. She promptly used that $5 to buy more tickets. Finally she ran out of tickets and money and moved on. Thank God, the next person REALLY needed a quart of vodka and cigarettes.  Then next person picked thru the porn magazines, rented a porn video and bought a little itty bitty bottle of Seagrams7.

I was getting closer to the front of the line.

The next people in line turned out to be a couple who didn’t speak English or Spanish or anything anyone could understand. They had a hundred dollar bill and wanted something that was behind the counter. The clerk pointed to damn near everything behind the counter, failing at every gesture. Then it dawned on the bright-eyed woman in front of me to tell the clerk that they wanted a phone card. She either suddenly spoke Croatian or was once a successful game show contestant who knew how to guess at “stuff”.  Now I was even more curious about what she had on under her coat.
At long last, the woman in the long winter coat, the only person left in front of me, got to the front of the line. What did she want? She asked the clerk what time it was. And left as soon as she learned it was now 6:50 AM. As she turned to leave, her coat opened a bit and I saw that she had Bob Marley on a tee-shirt. Nothing else. Her pubic hair was dyed black black as well. Yeah, seriously Goth.

I triumphantly bellied up to the counter and said “$2 on Number 2” and stuck out my hand with the two dollar bills.

“Pumps don’t work. Can’t you read?” was the disappointing answer.

So I had to be content with two porn magazines, a little itty bottle of Jack Daniels and three lottery tickets. And then off to work! Didn’t want to hold up the four or five people behind me.