Tequila Makes You Do Strange Things

Ocean temperature: Nice (when I asked the lifeguard what 'nice' meant, he said, "68, 72, whatever you want it to be." That's beach science for you).
Beach read: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
Best song randomly heard on the radio: First Train Home, Imogene Heap

There's a little general store down here called Wink's and it's been around since my family first started vacationing here when I was a little kid.

My parents relied on it for two things mainly: a daily Washington Post and a gallon of milk when we were running low.

These days, you can still buy a 25-cent postcard or an 8-cent Tootsie Roll in a place that looks virtually unchanged.

As you check out, there is always a box of locally-grown tomatoes for sale next to the register, both then and now.

It was for those tomatoes that I went to Wink's this afternoon when a craving for a tomato sandwich hit (alright, it was going to be a bacon and tomato sandwich, but I had plenty of bacon).

 Standing at the register, I noticed two old photographs on the wall.

One I'd seen dozens of times before; it's an old image of Wink's taken from the air back before the area was much developed and it's striking for how simple the landscape was.

But the other photo was new to me.

It looked like a blown-up Polaroid picture with its weird shades of blue. I leaned in closer to make sure I was seeing it right.

An employee was nearby sweeping up the floor of sand, surely an endless job.

I noticed him noticing me looking at the picture of what appeared to be a donkey in front of Wink's.

"Is that...?" I started to ask.

"Found it in an old Pepsi box in the back and had it enlarged, " he said matter-of-factly. "It's a burro and a cart. Belonged to Miss Alice, you know, Miss Alice what owned the Sea Ranch."

I did know of the old Sea Ranch motel, so I nodded.

"But what the...?" I wondered out loud.

"One year she went on vacation to Mexico and a few weeks after she got back, she got a call from Elizabeth City, telling her to come pick up her burro. Boy, was she surprised!"

Me, incredulously, "She didn't remember buying a burro?"

"Nope," he chuckled, "but you know how Miss Alice was. She got herself that cart and she used to have that burro pull her up the beach road to shop here."

At this point, my amazement is apparent. The photograph does indeed show a charming little two-seater cart attached to a burro clearly in front of the store, with the Wink's sign in plain view.

My only disappointment is that Miss Alice herself is not pictured.

"You know," he continues, "You look a little like her when she was young."

This old-timer with the push broom has just completed the mental picture for me.

I am imagining myself in that cart, my little brown bag of tomatoes next to me on the seat, heading the half mile back home behind a slow-moving burro.

Let the impatient drivers stack up behind me.

Unlike Miss Alice, I don't think I'd forget buying a burro, although if she was the tequila fan that I am, perhaps the lapse in memory is understandable given her location at the time.

But very much like Miss Alice, I can totally appreciate making the best of an impetuous decision.

With any luck, I can only hope that the same sort of comments would be made of me.

"Well, you know how Miss Karen was..."