variation on: The Shortest Days of the Year

Some of my best jobs have been in gas stations/corner stores. My first legitimate job was at the one and only Sunnie’s. I can remember sitting on an overturned milk crate in the walk in cooler about half an hour before closing. I was reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead at the time, or maybe I was just looking at it. In my walkman was The Best of Cream. It wasn’t an actual walkman, I don’t think I ever owned one of those, I always owned these GPX personal cassette players that Caldor sold for 9.99 or thereabouts. In the empty cassette case I had a bunch of "mushrooms." From inside the cooler I could peer out in between the beer bottles toward the front of the store and keep tabs on Sunnie’s location. Sunnie always ran the register, he still does, he just hires kids to stock the shelves and mop the floor. I was just waiting for the right time to eat the "mushrooms" and get my mop water ready for my final task of the night. I remember grabbing a snapple and munching at those "mushrooms" as quick as I could. Then I got my mop bucket out and went to the front of the store before Sunnie came looking for me, as he often did, I was usually in the back scribbling in notebooks and smoking cigarettes, thinking of better ways to steal beer without any chance of getting caught. I was a master thief. The only chance of ever getting caught was in my head. So I checked the clock and knew just how much time I had, I began to mop as O.M.C’s "How Bizarre" began playing on the store’s overhead speaker. "How Bizarre" was always playing and at that point in my life it always seemed to fit. I mopped up with my head down, and when I finished I went to the back and poured out the water in the slop sink, put on my hoodie and went to the front door to wait for Sunnie to finish closing out. It was the longest wait of my life. I had misjudged just how long it would take for the mushrooms to take effect. I should have eaten something first. Finally Sunnie went to the back and I could hear that clicking sound of switching breakers as the store lights went out in sync.
After what felt like an eternity, Sunnie came back up front and opened the door and I was free. After that it was just "She walks like a bearded rainbow" and having hands ten times their normal size that somehow managed to hold up the sky. Anyway, the rest doesn’t have to do with a gas station/ corner store at all. This was just the first one. The second store has many more stories, a full chapter of a book perhaps. I remember getting drunk and saying to myself "I’ll call it my gas station symphony." God Bless Sunnie’s. And now that he has satellite televison and radio it’s always aljazeera and bollywood movies and that great screaming nonsense that he plays on the overhead speaker nowadays. How bizarre, indeed. To be continued, endlessly.