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Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details. In winter there is nothing quite so important as thinking about beer. By J. G. Fabiano In this part of the world, time has a tendency to go real slow from the end of January through the middle of March. I assume it has something to do with the absence of sun or the cold weather. Even though this winter has shown us little extreme cold or snow, the days seem to last forever and the calendar never seems to change. Therefore, in order to keep one's sense of humor, I have always found it necessary to create some distractions. Some people take up a winter sport to pass their time away. I view this as giving in to winter, especially since I have a tough time standing on a new pair of shoes and any temperature below 40 degrees has a tendency to make me slur my words. Some people hibernate in their homes, watching television or working their way through a library of books. I haven't seen a good television show since Gilligan's Island and, as for reading a good book, I need some warm coastal air blowing on my face and the ocean in front of me to enjoy someone else's words. So, what does a person like me do to pass his time? The New England Patriots helped this year by giving us an unexpectedly exciting season. In fact, amazingly, they are still playing as I write this essay. When it's a big Patriots' game most of the neighborhood comes over to my house to watch the game in my basement; because it has become the place to do this. We yell at the referees and offer disgraceful comments about their eyesight and mental competence, which makes us feel good. However, we all know that soon the season will be over, and another void will be here to stretch out the days even further. Basketball and hockey try to fill this emptiness but fail because they play too many games. Plus, they play well into Spring, when other thoughts occupy our minds, and they fade into irrelevance. Another means of passing the dog days of a Maine winter is to go grocery shopping. This might sound a bit odd but where else can one observe a society that is exponentially growing around us? My wife and I seem to spend many of our evenings at Shop n' Save on Route One picking up something that we know we need, but never seem to remember to pick up the day before. Every now and then we go full grocery shopping, which allows me to wander off and observe the behavior of my fellow winter co-habitants. As I observe, many questions always seem to crop up in my mind. For example, why would anyone be in a hurry during this time of year? Last weekend I was almost run over by a young woman who desperately needed to buy the right brand of linguine. I guess I was in her way and when I attempted to apologize she gave me that: "Why were you allowed to live so long" look. Another question that always comes to mind is why do people with bald heads always wear clothes that are two or three sizes too small? Does the lack of hair necessitate a hopeful loss of weight? Plus, all the men with bald heads seem short to me. Not that I am tall but why do men with shiny bald heads always have to be short? I guess this is one of those great mysteries of life. Bald women, on the other hand, are --- well, that is another story. The intensity of shoppers also seems to relate to what they are shopping for. For example, no one smiles in the fruit and vegetable section. Their eyebrows are always furrowed down around their eyes as they grope through the piles of apples or cauliflowers, but, in the bakery section people tend to loosen up and smile a bit. I assume this is because a missed opportunity to pick the best loaf of bread is not as important as picking the perfect tangerine. Even the different aisles of the store seem to bring out different human emotions. Cans of coffee are never picked through. I guess this is because one has the tendency to drink the same brand of coffee that one's father and father's father drank when they started off their day. Teas have to be picked more carefully. This is because the flavors of tea have increased dramatically over the past decade or so. I remember my mother's big challenge was having to decide between Red Rose or Lipton. Today there are entire aisles displaying types of teas that promise to cure everything from the common cold to sexual dysfunction. Walking up and down the aisles in the middle of the store is boring. I see many of my fellow observers with their hands held behind their backs, either observing the people around them or waiting for their wives to pick that perfect pear, but the meat department is one of my favorite places. This is where the "haggle gene" from the markets of our past comes out. People not only ask the butcher behind the counter for that perfect cut of meat but they are allowed to ask when the cut was made, and why it cost more than it did a few days earlier. Most people leave this area confident that they have succeeded in purchasing that ideal cut of meat at the best possible price. The butchers, like the butchers of the past, know differently. The fish counter is always big in this part of the country. This is probably because we live by the ocean and are therefore supposed to eat more fish but, the fish displayed on the mounds of ice behind the counter are never fish that I have ever seen in the oceans that approach our shores. I have no concept what a monk fish is and there are some varieties of fish that look too much like a piece of meat for me to purchase. Of course, there are the traditional haddock and shrimp but I always worry whether it is fresh or frozen. During this time of year I know of very few products that have never been frozen. The beer department is another of my favorites in my battle against the winter blahs, probably because it is the adult male's equivalent of the toy department. In all the hours I have spent perusing the stacked shelves of the beer department I have yet to see a woman in this area. Few women seem to like beer so this has become a men-only zone, one of the few public places left in the world where guys can ponder, in relative peace, such enduring mysteries of life as; is Coors better than Budweiser or is it just advertising? If my wife cannot find me anywhere else in the store she knows she will find me in the beer department: gazing at the chiller windows, dreaming of the balmy days of summer when, coming in from the garden hot and grass-stained or back from the beach all sweaty and sandy, a cold beer tastes the way God intended it to taste. Maybe it's this endless anticipation that makes time go real slow this time of year. The End
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