Familiar Places
By Collin Hockenbury
As I walked around St. Matthews, I was reminded of this heartfelt letter from Frank the Tank.
Like the Godfather, my home wasn’t really my home anymore.
I wasn’t in a ghost town—not yet, anyway. Cars still hummed up and down Shelbyville and Breckenridge and Chenoweth and Frankfort. A few other people were on the sidewalks. But no one went in anywhere, and no one came out. The windows of the St. Matthews staples were all dark, and on the other side of the ones I could see through, the chairs were turned upside down on the tables. No one manned the registers. Neon “Open” signs glowed, but they were lying. We weren’t really welcome inside.
Other quarantine days have left me longing for the future. Picturing it. The day I’m in the living room watching the news, and Fauci comes on the air and says, “Brothers and sisters, the virus has gone.” (I’m not sure why his declaration is so Pope-like.) I look down at the sweatpants-flip flops combo I’ve had on for as long as I can remember. I run a hand through my oily hair, now a festering mullet. And as my eyes scan the tube of Clorox wipes on the coffee table in front of me, it all sets in. I drop from the couch to my knees, burst into tears, and pry open the lid, removing the last moist square from the little plastic sphincter to dab my eyes. The phone rings: it’s party time. Beers. Daps. “Rockstar” by Nickelback. Now.
That’s the dream.
But on this day, instead of imagining how freedom would look, I considered the past, conjuring up memories tied to my favorite places as I walked past them.
Summers ago, a tanner, skinnier version of me walks into Plehn’s ready to decimate lunch. I go all in. Three smiley face cookies, a TruMoo chocolate milk, a turkey sammie and a bag of chips. The monetary damage will be considerable, but it’s worth it. A friend works here, and she’s the one who gestures to the register to ring me up. She recites my items back to me as she enters them, rubbing my excessive haul in my face: “…large chocolate milk and one, two, three cookies. Okay, Collin, your total is one dollar and seventeen cents.”
“I… hm?”
“One-seventeen, please.”
It finally get it. I fumble two dollars out of my wallet and tell her to keep the change, like an idiot. Then I exit with a large paper bag, eat its contents in my car and drive home.
Jenny’s had a hard day. She’s in her third year of med school and her surgery rotation is taking a toll. Just come over, her text says. We’ll watch some Schitt’s Creek or something. Hell yeah we will, but not before I surprise you with your favorite: chicken pad see ew, spice level 5 because you’re a savage.
The surprise is a success. I pocket my invisible brownie points then inhale a modest helping of dumplings and level 2 fried rice, because I like to actually taste my food. SC hits the spot, too, just not in a dunked-in-soy-sauce kind of way.
My friend is drunk. We’re at the side of the bar near the staircase to the second floor, which I forget exists. It’s packed but I manage to commandeer a beer. I’m about to give the bartender my last name when my friend asks if they sell cigs here. No is the obvious response. She turns around, nullifying his 15-minute wait time. Two guys in camo Kentucky hats laugh in his face.
Just then, the DJ digs into his shallow bag of party tricks and pulls out my personal favorite: interjecting “My mind is telling me nooo!” from the beginning of “Bump n’ Grind” into whatever song is playing without a hint of finesse. No fade-in. No mixing in some instrumentals. Nothing. He just interrupts Usher while he’s trying to sing “Yeah!” with Lil Jon. Eventually he lets R. Kelly get into the opening verses. It’s only a matter of time before he plays “Face Down” by the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, his playlist’s crowning jewel, his ace in the hole. (I wonder if my friend was able to bum a cig by the time he did. Probably not.)
DiOrio’s after midnight is never as simple as it sounds. You think, surely to God I won’t see those same six dudes I went to high school with here again, and yet there they are, every time. You meet their glazed-over eyes and make friendly conversation about absolutely nothing. Then you wait too long for a pizza that is going to burn your mouth.
I’m with David and Reed, who order the 30-inch behemoth—all BBQ chicken—and when it’s ready, we get it out the shop door but can’t fit it into our Uber. Reed calculates some angles and figures out how to jimmy it inside like a veteran furniture mover. When we get to Reed’s, Dave shifts the box from his lap and the entire pie slides out of the cardboard and onto the floor of the car. We calmly fold the massive pizza up, like a parachute made of dough, and stuff it back in the box—picture packing a tent after a camping trip. Everyone eats three slices, carefully picking the hairs and grass off.
There was probably dog shit on that pizza. And it still burned me. But it was good. It always is.
I’m four years old, and Graeter’s is my favorite thing in the world. I like it more than my family, more than our labrador, more than cartoons, more than my coloring books. And my dad just asked me if I want to go get some.
He packs me and my sister into the car. As soon as it’s in drive, I start terrorizing her. My dad warns me.
“Keep it up and we’re going home.”
Yeah f--king right, dad. I keep going. Rubbing her bald head and shaking her car seat. My dad whips the car into the nearest driveway and turns us around. I panic. I hysterically promise to change my ways.
“No more! I’ll be good! Graeter’s! Chocolate! Dad! Please!”
“Collin, I’m serious.”
“Yes, dad. I’ll be good. Please, dad.”
He turns around again, setting course for Graeter’s. I sigh and relax into the back seat. A smile forms on my face.
“I knew you’d turn around.”
My dad hits a U-turn in the middle of the street this time.
“No! No! NOO!”
When we get back to the house, he takes my sister out of her car seat and calmly goes up the front steps. I howl like a banshee in our Ford Explorer, banging on the windows, choking out desperate pleas through my tears.
“Pl-pleeeease!”
But he just leaves me in there, going berserk.
God only knows when I accepted defeat and went inside. Or the size of the chocolate chip I might have found in my ice cream that day. It still haunts me.
Mecca.
Those sticky floors belong to the college kids now. They wear t-shirts with front pockets that say Vineyard Vines and Sigma Tau Upsilon. They have backwards hats with front flow poking through the strap hole. They sing “Wagon Wheel” like it’s the first time they’ve heard it.
I was them once. Happy just to be there, peeing every 12 minutes in that tiny bathroom by the ATM. I always seemed to get the middle urinal, and it always seemed to be between two fat guys—one of them usually announced his arrival by hocking on the urinal cake before he unzipped. I didn’t care. I was in the prime of my life. I had no responsibility except to stop at the Mini Mart for Frito’s Flavor Twists on the way back to my friends’ place on Macon.
If there’s a silver lining to this pandemic, it’s gratitude. The appreciation for the little things when normal life returns will be as unprecedented as the situation we find ourselves in. A bartender handing you a crisp IPA. A dance floor. A pizza shared among friends.
Are 95% of my memories about food or beer?
95% of the good ones, yeah.
