Beach Diary Chapter 2

The picture above has nothing to do with this post. Cindy Cashdollar performing at the Avalon Theater in Easton, MD, last week. She performed with Sonny Landreth.

Review of last chapter: During the sultry summer season of 1997, I was standing next to my pop-up margarita stand as a nor’easter raged around me. Wind, sleet, lightning, all landing on me, all very uncomfortable. I secretly hoped Heather would rollerblade down from Dewey Beach and dominate me again. Instead, a black van stopped next to me from the Bethany Brethren Church. Despite my misgivings, I disclosed my hopes, dreams, and business plans to a woman in the van with a perky voice who I could not see. Even in the center of the storm I could feel there was trouble brewing.

Being drenched from grimy road puddles by a black-windowed van put me in a dirty mood. No sales, no Heather, road grit crunched in my teeth, and cinders in my eyes. Pathetically, the nor’easter did not clean me off. If that were not uncomfortable enough, I felt like a total dork giving the anonymous woman in the van all my business data. The only thing I didn’t do was give her my TurboTax login. Little did I realize that I risked my family income as I fell for a perky voice.

The chill from the nor’easter was nothing compared to the chill I felt when I realized I had another problem. Problems on top of problems; this was not a good day. What the heck am I going to do with all these margaritas? Certainly, I’m not getting any more customers today. And the jugs are too darned heavy to take back home.

Dumping them out on Rt. 1 was out of the question. On all social media, I advertised that I make my margaritas fresh daily, and they only contain organic ingredients. In addition, my margaritas are gluten-free, contain no GMOs, are vegan, and have no preservatives. Whenever a customer complains about the price, I recited this in an elevator speech. Obviously, I couldn’t throw it all away.

I needed a drink. Badly. Who wouldn’t under these circumstances? I struggled to pour myself an adult dose as the wind almost separated me from my margarita. I chugged it down rather lose it. Hmm, my margarita tasted slightly off. I checked the “use by” date, which was over a year ago. Damn, the WD-40 I spray in it to stabilize the ingredients was no longer effective.

All I could do was drink my entire inventory; weird odors be damned. I peddled home as fast as I could while dodging lightning strikes in the storm. Occasionally I had to stop to throw up on the side of Rt. 1. My step-pappy lied to me when he said, “Expiration dates don’t mean shit!”

The next morning was a perfect beach day. I snuck out of the condo while everyone was sleeping. Half asleep I was operating on my rote training as a commando. I hitched my bike trailer to my bike and peddled out of the high-rise condominium projects toward Delaware Rt. 1.

Don’t think for a second that leaving Bethany Beach high-rise condominium projects is easy-peasy. Family-value-oriented drug gangs have violent gun battles every morning over territory. About a block from the condo we rented, an explosion startled me as my bike caught a .45-caliber round. Luckily, it hit the front fender rather than the tire. I jumped off my bike, found cover behind my margarita stand and emptied a clip of 9mm rounds into an armed group of Harvard pre-admission freshmen firing from the woods. A handy smoke grenade I threw provided me additional cover. I can’t tell if I hit anyone, but there was no return fire until I was long gone, like a turkey through the corn.

Approaching Rt. 1, I smelled the Atlantic’s bracing fresh sea air. Delaware’s ocean is blue-state clean and smells fresh. It ain’t no shit-hole red state ocean like in Florida where 121 miles of rotting, stinking seaweed fouls the beaches all summer. Last week, a bather in Miami stuck his fungus-infected big toe in the algae. His big toe was discovered three days later, but not the rest of him. And if the putrid seaweed don’t get ya’, the hungry sharks will.

Up in Dewey, they have a name for wind and drinks and beer. The beer is Bud, the drink G&T, and they call the wind Beyoncé. When Beyoncé be coming out of the south, she pushes me all the way to Dewey. That’s the way it was this morning.

Way up ahead of me on the right shoulder, I see a shack-like structure that looks like my pop-up margarita stand. It was hard to see through the heat waves coming off the black asphalt appearing as puddles on the highway. As I get closer, the pop-up stand starts looking very, very familiar. WTF? There is something happening here, but I don’t know what it is. I think to myself. I also see a bunch of bikes on the shoulder with riders hanging around the shack. I start feeling a terrible sense of dread, but I’m not sure why just yet. When I pulled to the side and dismounted from my bike, saw the shack was filled with T-shirts. Three or four young bike riders were pawing through the merchandise and a dark-skinned elderly gentleman was collecting money from them. “What is this about?” I say, more aggressively than I mean to. The old man does not respond. A kid points to a sign that reads: I am deaf, please use American Sign Language.

I don’t know ASL, so I ask if any of the kids do. A boy who looks to be in high school responds, “That’s a great question. I do as a matter of fact. Can I help you?”

“That’s a great question. Yeah, please translate for me. Ask him what the heck he is doing here.”

Hands wave back and forth, and for the sake of brevity, I will not say this again as this whole dialogue will be sentence after sentence of waving hands.

The kid reports, “That’s a great question. I’m selling T-shirts. What does it look like I’m doing, gringo?”

“That’s an excellent question. Where are you from?”

“Thanks for that good question. Bethany Beach,” he answers. Now I’m in a pickle. I don’t want to go all Royal Family racist on him and ask him where he is really from. But I don’t believe his answer answers my question.

“How long have you been living in Bethany Beach?” This was a more woke way to ask it.

“Super good woke question, gringo. Since last night. The Bethany Brethren Church brought us up from Mexico to sell stuff.”

“How much are they paying you?” I’m doing everything I can to keep my voice level so as not to alarm him that I am thinking of a way to shut him down.

“Your good question streak ended, a-hole. Ten cents an hour, plus all the torn inventory,” he answers assertively. “I send it home for bedding.”

“Mister, this is 1997. The minimum wage is a buck fifty an hour. You are being exploited.”

“No mâs,” he says and ducks into the shack, shaking his head.

The kid says, “He told me the church cut a deal with the drug cartels who are holding his family hostage in Mexico. They will kill them unless he sells a lot of stuff. Give the guy a break.” The kid gives me the evil eye and rests his hand on the gun tucked into his bathing suit. “Leave it. Do you understand what I’m saying, gringo?” Without saying a word, I remount my bike to peddle north, and Beyoncé’s still got my back,

My phone rings and I see it is my mother-in-law calling. I don’t want to answer, but if I don’t, she’ll keep calling me every five minutes until I give up and answer. I click the Talk button and say, “Hey Mother-In-Law, what’s up?”

“What are your gross receipts this morning?” She is never one to waste time with small talk. 

“Good question. Nothing, so far. There are shacks all the way up Rt. 1 selling things. I just passed one selling cheap jewelry. I don’t see how any customers will have money to buy from me.”

“Fuck you and your good question bullshit. You better get cracking on making some sales. My daughter wants to go shopping and buy my grandkids new shoes.” She hung up before I could say anything more.

I’m getting depressed, but I keep on peddling over the hill when I saw Maybelline in a Coupe DeVille. Oops, that’s Chuck Berry’s diary. Let’s get back in the box. I see another shack, this one selling beach paraphernalia, cheap chairs, flip-flops, sunshades, etc. A deaf gentleman from Mexico was handling the money. My Delaware Rt. 1 is changing forever, not for better.

There was a shack selling different stuff at every milepost on Rt. 1: a bookstore and cafe, saltwater taffy stand, a bank, car dealership, pizza place, Taco Bell, civil aviation airport, an outlet mall, Urgent Care, and more. Exploited older deaf Mexican men were running all these. None got paid a living wage because drug cartels in Mexico held their families hostage.

I’m thinking I’ll call the cops, call my congressional representative, or a hit man. I can’t complete with labor being paid ten cents an hour, but my family needs the money for the children’s new shoes. I had no choice but to keep going to set up my stand and sell some margaritas while I still have a chance.

Peddling about half a mile from my usual retail spot, I see the most shocking shack of all. This one sold: fentanyl, oxycodone, malt liquor, bennies, little white pills, codeine, Viagra, Percocet, smack, snow, margaritas, crack, weed, Mary Jane, horse, snort, hash, cannabis, Special K, PCP, airplane glue, mother’s little helper, propofol, peyote, propane, mickey, cans of aerosol, CBD oil, Spanish fly, ketamine, white lightning, lithium, Prozac, meth, Cialis, valium, testosterone, heroine, one pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all, Demerol, speed, moonshine, Botox, estrogen, Versed, cocaine, diet pills, marijuana, quaaludes, Ecstasy, Xanax, Gamma Hydroxybutyrate, LSD, Lou Reed in the corner singing, “I’m waiting for my man..,” (see Appendix A for complete list).

I said, “Holly shite, what an inventory! My 1.5% ABV margaritas won’t sell at all. I gotta think. I need a drink!”

No sooner than I said those words when 30 beautiful women rollerbladed out of the north from Dewey Beach followed by 30 buff guys. Sixty needy customers, all of whom were offering wads of cash to the deaf Mexican man at the counter. I don’t sell to guys, for obvious reasons, but the old man running this shack had no such scruples. I grabbed as much as I could. Me and 60 young drug addicts fighting over the stock. They all smell of coconut sunscreen and I feel like I’m fighting in a Pina Colada factory. My step-mama didn’t raise me to put up with this shit. To end the madness, I pulled out my gun and they ran like turkeys through the corn.

“What are you going to do with all these drugs?” The deaf boss asked with a laugh. It impressed me how my interpreter signed a laugh.

“You and the church are putting me out of business here in Delaware. I’m buying all these drugs to take home and sell to rich middle school kids in Northern Virginia.”

The old man broke out in a high-pitched hysterical laugh. He started coughing from a heart attack. Subsequently, he cleared his throat and started speaking Spanish quickly. “You’re a gringo a-hole. Where do you think we got all these drugs? And you are going back to the seventh graders at St. Stephen’s & St. Agnes School to sell them what they sold us? Good luck with that!”

I felt crushed. My dream of being elected 1997 Delaware Rt. 1 Entrepreneur of The Year was blowing in the wind.

Unlike most people, I don’t like change. Last year, I met Heather. Last year, I made big bucks to buy the boys new shoes. This year, nothing. To get things back to normal, I gotta push the Bethany Brethren Church off Delaware Rt. 1. I started making plans…

Will Beyoncé still have my back? Can I embrace change? Will I find a way to remove the Bethany Brethren Church from Delaware Rt. 1? Will my children get a new pair of shoes? Will Heather rollerblade back into my life?

 Check the next installment for the surprising answers!