Today I heard the story ... a story, because this story is part of a larger story ... about a very old woman who makes her living selling liquor by the shot out of her trailer. The bottles are set up on the floor under her kitchen table. You can buy a cigarette too ... for fifty cents or a dollar depending on what her resources look like, and what she perceives yours to be. She maybe has other stuff for sale too.

I'm thinking about that ... A five dollar pack of twenty cigarettes expanding to ten or even twenty bucks. It's how she makes her living. She's been doing it for over fifty years, so I hear.

I'm thinking about going to meet her. Not because I want a cigarette or a shot of something. I'm thinking about other parts of her story. And ... I heard she would really like me and I would really like her and I wonder about that.

Now it is late in the day and I've been thinking about this today. I am interested in this "colorful" story. In a sense I admire this type of ingenuity ... "this type" being making something workable from what is at hand. I would like to see this woman's face and how she moves. Interesting. I don't admire illegal craftiness. Not in a prissy way ... it's like this bottom-feeding activity is beneath a woman with an indomitable will to provide for her own. She might have found another way somewhere along the path of this easy way. Maybe it is her very best effort. I heard an eight year old is allowed to "shop" at her table. That's not good. That may be predatory, I do not know, this is not my culture. I would like to "feel" the way the space feels around her, but ... I won't. I would look at that life as a tourist. I would assuage my curiosity. I have heard that this woman is extremely nurturing, and has an engaging sense of humor. I don't doubt that I would like her. But ... .