Scooped

Ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit in a hot 1990’s Oklahoma parking-lot should motivate anyone to hurry along, and the few withered shrubs were certainly not inviting. But this was not your ordinary family driving to the local and very neighborly grocery store — if you consider “neighborly” to mean that there were ways to get some free food. (And that’s not even considering the questionable “over-sampling”.) Yes, we are talking about drive-bys — trailer-park style.

Urban drive-bys don’t begin to compare to the sheer nerve required to follow through with the trailer-park maneuver. Urban drive-bys usually involved a fast car, semi-automatic weapons, loud music, and maybe even some shiny hubcaps that someone bought instead of a Wendy’s frosty. (Everyone needs frosties in their lives.) In other words: there was no real commitment in the urban drive-by, nothing really at stake if you were fast enough. But everyone knows that the trailer-park drive-by was in a class of its own. In fact, the only similarities between urban drive-bys and trailer-park drive-bys was a whole lot of looking over your shoulder, and a car was involved, sometimes. (You could even pull this drive-by off on a bicycle.) And certainly, the trailer-park drive-by takes a whole lot more bravery, a whole lot less pride, and people were usually delirious on the most orange drink selling with the McDonald’s Happy Meal. Most importantly, the trailer-park drive-by is considered somewhat legal; perhaps maybe?

This car was certainly not fast, but occupants were brandishing weapons: double-barreled repeating Super Soaker squirt guns wielded by two little boys. They sat in the back seat of the 1984 Cadillac with swank cracked pleather seats. It was nicknamed: “The Bomb”. It was pink. And if you didn’t leave the windows cracked in the heat of the day, “The Bomb” more or less turned into a kiln that wastefully baked away leftover double cheeseburgers, giving them the texture and smell of half cleaned, three-day-old, sunbaked, catfish. But, not everyone has that kind of itch for mystery meat nailed onto skinning boards. Something more diverse is necessary.

Even though the boys’ hadn’t had any coke, their heads still popped up and down over the back seat like one of those hammering games at a Chuck-e-Cheese’s pizza party. Their driver was only called “Mom”; you never called her by her first name — ever. The luxurious Cadillac inconspicuously turned into the Homeland grocery store parking lot; their logo featured an orange sweltering sun as if anyone needed to be reminded about how hot it got. There weren’t a lot of people grocery shopping that day; social security and food-stamp checks came nearer to the beginning of the month. The Cadillac drifted slowly around the back loading dock — the deliveries wouldn’t come until 2 o’clock. But, the trick to pulling off a successful trailer-park drive-by is to appropriately account for those black-helicopters and spy-satellites launched by left-wing Democrats to impinge on the rights of red-white-and-blue-blooded American families, just like this one.

See in the 1990s, those black-helicopters would run silently, and very rarely, you might spot one following you in the daylight. (But sometimes they “flew in the sun” so you couldn’t see them). So if you were safely in the lee side of the store in the shadows just at noon, you would be okay. You always had to be mindful of the very low orbiting satellites that sprayed insecticide and behavioral modification compounds, (especially the aerosols dispersed to compensate for all the nuclear testing done on American soil — which everyone knew was true because it was suppressed from all the news). Still, this family had to make their score as fast as possible, before the day got too hot and before those chemicals would reach the soil. The very best time was at about three minutes after noon, when the local television satellite would fly over and block the spy satellites. Even trickier, when you went behind a building, they could still track you based on your speed and calculate when you should be coming out the other side.

The Cadillac passed the first loading dock, everyone craning their necks looking for open doors, forklifts spitting around, or for someone taking a smoke break. It was all clear. The Cadillac suddenly jerked to a stop, not skidding its tires — this lady was a professional. The back right door flew open, and the two boys sprang out as Mom slid to the passenger window and watched as they climbed — into the first of two sun-scorched, rusted, and ironically rust-colored dumpsters. There was never time to hit both at once. The boys, one a little taller and older than the other, very deftly climbed, careful not to burn themselves on the hot metal.

“Don’t get the open ones!” Mom said.

The boys looked around to get a good sense of what was there. Lots of packages of vegetables were thrown about. They were packaged in transparent plastic bags, with those little diamond-shaped holes in them to let the water in when the sprinklers came on inside the store. Asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower. No, this wouldn’t do. Both boys looked at each other and started tearing open some of the bags.

“Mom, lots of these are already opened! I think somebody has already been here!” The older one shouted.

They hurried in case she would get out and check. The littler boy took some broccoli and carrots that weren’t opened and handed it to her as she reached out of the window — a consolation prize. Anything would be better than asparagus and cauliflower. And maybe she would let them eat the broccoli raw with some ranch dip. Probably not.

The boys knew what to look for. Certain types of things always expired: produce, meat, and dairy. Even though meat was always off-limits, the boys deemed dairy as an exception. This was probably the only true motivation to get the boys to dumpster dive, and it was certainly the only reason they came back on their bicycles when Mom wasn’t with them. And now they were digging deeper for their prize.

And there they were, their friends, resting at the bottom of the dumpster: pints of Edy’s, Breyers, and Blue Bunny ice cream — all three! Some of the lids had slipped off, and some of the ice cream had fallen out; to the boys, it was a perfectly melted mess. Surgically, they liberated the wayward masses of ice cream, and the sludge was scooped back into each soggy bucket of bliss.

“Mom! There’s even some ice cream! But it’s starting to melt!” Of course, they were practiced in assuring her, assuaging any doubts or the sudden burdens of perhaps-unhygienic indulgences of sudden wealth. The youngest brother stood and presented Edy’s and Breyers ice cream tubs.

“Get in! We have to go!” Mom shouted. Time had run out for Blue Bunny Pecan Praline.

The two boys jumped out of the dumpster as Mom slid back behind the wheel, their plunder resting in the shade of the passenger seat. Just as the back door closed, the engine revved high, and the Cadillac shot to the other end of the back lot. They had to make up time to make sure that the satellites wouldn’t notice that they had stopped. But just before they rounded the corner, the Cadillac quickly slowed down and casually turned through the parking lot to head home. The store manager waved back to the grinning boys as he stood welcoming shoppers into the store. In the back seat, the boys smiled at each other. Two out of three saved. No, not bad at all.

e.s. kohen
cmp.2009.04.12
ed.20200208.03 (For Editing)

Notes:
As anyone else who has lived all over the United States has figured out, divisions in U.S. politics are not as clear-cut as “Conservative vs. Liberal”. It’s as though everyone keeps alluding to some genetic anomaly, or mental-handicap — on both sides. The fact is: poverty is poverty, everywhere you go. But why is it ignored that education always seems to be the first sacrifice at the altar of necessity? Perhaps there is a lot more room for a little patience and mercy.