Work, work, work, then at 11:45 I slipped out of the office. My first errand wasn’t the laptop but to visit the urban winery located in the Livestock Exchange building on Genessee Avenue, near the Kemper Arena. I’d had a glass of chardonnay by Inland Sea wines at the Blue Bird Bistro a week before that I absolutely loved. I vowed to purchase some for myself, if not because I love an escapade but because it was local wine, and it was good. The local grocery didn’t carry it, so I e-mailed the winery and they had an office downtown. The manager said his wife could meet me if I was available, and I was. What an adventure…I’d never been to this part of downtown before.
Something I love about Kansas City is the never-ending supply of old buildings renovated to serve modern purposes. The Livestock Exchange is a perfect example of this, complete with 50’s style subway tile, beautifully preserved light fixtures and an elevator that has to be manually operated, I fell in love with it immediately.
Jose, my middle-aged elevator operator, did not speak much English, so he made a gesture as if to ask if I was looking for the winery. It was clearly not Jose’s job to be escorting me about, but he did it anyway and he did it kindly. I liked him right away. I watched his short body toddle in front of me, his belly hanging over his belt and his hands swinging happily at his sides, and smiled.
Apparently the offices were upstairs but no one was in, presumably because it was lunch. Jose took me to a few other places in search of the woman I was to meet about the wine I wanted to buy. I wondered if Jose was ever scared of operating the elevator, given its shaky nature and the dangerous iron gates that if closed improperly could easily take off a finger, maybe a hand. My Spanish however, is limited to single words, and even those are not very useful ones with the possible exception of baño. I’ve never had a shortage of appreciation for immigrants, but that day, I felt especially proud to be escorted by him. I also made a mental note that should I ever meet the building manager that I would suggest they get Jose a real uniform, because he operated the elevator quote well. He was dressed in what looked to me to be a mechanic's uniform. Maybe he’d just taken it upon himself to operate the elevator the way he had to escort me throughout the building. This thought made me like him even more. I made another mental note to write an angry blog about how America is not bilingual enough…I wanted to talk to Jose. There is no political reason great enough to stop two people from learning how to talk to each other. It seemed to me that healthcare was just another way to be racist on the part of Republicans and that it should be added to the long list of other racist things they did, like demonizing bilingual education.
Eventually, we ran into her as we exited the elevator for the third time and it turned out that she’d been waiting for me downstairs in the actual winery.I bought two bottles, made small talk with the owner and even found out that every Friday there was a wine tasting there. Needless to say, I know where I’ll be this Friday. She even let me write a check, which was a considerable act of kindness considering that she’d never met me and didn’t have the faintest idea if it was any good or not. But, I had no cash as the line at the Bank of America ATM, the only one on the way to the winery, had a line to Timbuktu when I drove by and I didn’t want to be late. Oh how I hate being late…. It reminded me of that article read on the place once about how smaller wineries would have to step it up to survive in a climate where most people want 97 points per bottle to spend any real cash on wine anymore. Most people were probably not as forward as I am about getting a hold of their wine. I hope they beat their distributor with a hubcap.
Then, it was on to find the FedEx shipping facility, conveniently located in BFE. My GPS couldn’t find it, so I entered the intersection mentioned in the printed directions I got from Google maps, and hit the road. While driving through the nothingness that is the outskirts of Kansas City, Missouri, I realized I felt uncomfortable in the open. I disliked and distrusted large open spaces. True, I felt anxious in the city as well, but perhaps I had allowed myself to feel that anxiety without thinking I was nuts because the city demands anxiety. Traffic, noise, pollution, and a ton of people is basically a recipe for apprehension. But out here in the open, I found myself unsure why there were no buildings, no people. I made a mental note to try to explore why I feel so uneasy in the open.
32 minutes and 10 Hindi film songs later, I was standing inside a small guard house outside the heavily guarded facility, waiting for someone to bring me my long awaited laptop. The guard didn’t chat with me or make small talk, and I didn’t with him either. I wasn’t sure why, since he made it with everyone else who came in. It appeared to be pay day, since people were coming in to get their paychecks and coming out with mixed emotions on their face…the kind that hourly employees always get when they feel overworked but “would’ve liked 10 more hours” on their checks.
Glad I hadn’t planned to storm the place with artillery and happy to be heading back to civilization, I made one more trip to the CVS in town to get my birth control pills. Yet another mental note was made to rant about how my insurance company will only pay for one month at a time, which costs them about $5 a pack of pills. I wondered to myself if they ever bother to calculate the cost of my picking it up every three weeks and not being able to refill it with more than five days left in it. The cost of my time and my sanity with one more thing I have to do because someone else won’t do it more conveniently…and I decided that no, they had not bothered. And would not, because insurance companies have a special place in hell.
But, at the end of my two-hour lunch, I had two bottles of wine, birth control and an laptop that I didn’t have before, not to mention some good blogging material.
Dinner tonight: Potatoes and fenugreek leaves with rice. Wallflower cake for dessert.
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