Inventory Time
In these days of home quarantine due to the deadly disease and winter weather emergencies that prevent us from going outside, just what does a bourbon lover do to occupy oneself? You could always sip some of that precious amber liquid but often that activity, no matter how attractive or pleasurable, is contraindicated given your work schedule or the time of day if retired from significant gainful employment. Some prudish and straight-laced folk look askance at day-drinking and, anyway, a hangover before supper is no fun at all. Besides, your beloved life partner (he, she or it) may object on some basis you fail to comprehend adequately.
So, what to do?
Facing this dilemma recently, I bravely decided to inventory my collection of Kentucky’s finest. Or Indiana’s or Colorado’s or whatever. (Did I fail to mention my mild OCD condition?) And I say ‘bravely’ because I had to find it all first.
Allow me to explain. We live in a house that was formerly owned and lovingly occupied by my mother-in-law and father-in law; my wife and her siblings all grew up here, everybody loves returning to the old manse for the annual gathering of the clan and there would be a mega collective hissy fit thrown should I broach the subject of listing it for sale. It‘s a reasonably large place but when we moved in thirty years ago following the passing of old Bob and Louise we basically moved all of our junk in on top of most of theirs. And, I am a packrat so we brought a lot with us; storage space is at a great premium here. Resultantly, my amassed stash of magic brown liquid is squirreled away all over the house: in the basement, in the attic, in the garage, in closets, in furniture, under furniture, behind furniture, you get the picture. And it’s not organized so it’s hard as hell to find a specific bottle when you want to show off for visitors. I mean it’s really cool to have a semi-valuable, treasured unicorn bottled in 1970 or so but when you go looking for it and return red-faced and empty-handed after twenty minutes your buddies are likely to think you were just putting them on about your ownership of that little something great and rare you claim to have acquired at a garage sale for two bucks.
So, I began by grabbing a tablet and a pen and went looking. That immensely frustrating activity took far longer that I originally anticipated it would. It’s very tiring moving boxes to uncover other boxes and then put them all back in their proper place so everything fits as it should; remember, space it at a premium. And when I started entering the accumulated data onto the crude spreadsheet I built, there was a whole lot of stuff I remember buying that wasn’t listed so it was back to the great booze search in order to locate it. Also, I had great trouble reading my handwriting and deciphering my inscrutable abbreviations as I worked at the computer and that added to the enormity of the task. But I grittily stuck with it and at the end of the exercise it was revealed that I had about twice as much whiskey (and whisky) as I thought I had. Who knew?
The other thing that became crystal clear was the safety and integrity of some of the bottles, specifically those in the basement. This house is almost one hundred years old and, despite its charm and curb appeal, it has the old house blues and by that I mean the trickles of water that course here and there throughout the basement every time we get a moderately heavy rain. Many of the cardboard boxes holding the bottles sit directly on the concrete floor and they’re going to get wet come spring for sure. The glass bottles would obviously not be damaged but the boxes would turn to mush and the whole thing would be a mess. I’m working on a solution; something short of repacking the entire contents of the basement and inexpensive would be nifty.
Now that that’s over, what the hell am I going to do for the next two months until I can savor a pour and a cigar on the back porch?I’m working on that too.How about another road trip into Kentucky, it’s only a drive of two hours; I’ll worry about storing my acquisitions when I get home!
