 Goodbye to Freshness. Wednesday, November 01, 2006 from today's Lexington Herald-Leader... Motorists pass the nondescript concrete block building that houses Fresh Liquor on North Limestone every day, having no inkling of the people power behind this tiny business. Owners Bruce and Brenda Ledford have remained close to the people in the neighborhood, where most have little money but many of the problems that come with poverty. 'It's more than a liquor store. There's a lot of community here,' said Aaron Hutson, who runs the non-profit East Seventh Street Center nearby. Starting early in the morning yesterday, a stream of friends and longtime customers -- white, black, Hispanic --stopped by to say so long to the Ledfords, who closed Fresh Liquor after 35 years in business. It's one of the oldest liquor stores in Lexington, and one of the remaining few with a drive-through window... Read the rest. I've passed by Fresh Liquors for most of my life ,but stopped there only a few times to venture through the drive-through. The most monumentous of the visits was when I was 17 and I had my drunk uncle laying in the back seat of my old man's 1977 Caprice Woody Station Wagon. My uncle had been on a 2 and one-half month drunk. Yes, you read that right, he had not been sober for about 70 days at that point and he still had another 30 or more in him before he crashed and burned, but I'm digressing. I went over by to check on him on my way to class and he begged me to give him a ride to the liquor store so he could get some cheap-assed wine...yes, it was that bad. I finally relented and he piled in. I drove to Fresh and passed the store's window on the driver's side so my uncle could place his order from the back. He raised up, rolled down the window on the wood-veneered yacht, got a blurry bead on the guy working and mumbled...'give me a bottle of Thunderbird, cold, and hold the lip!' In my naivet'e, it first registered to me that 'hold the lip' must be some sort of way to place a specific order. Like a 'on the rocks' or 'straight up' or 'no teeth Mr. Foley!' But when the cashier unwittingly said, 'excuse me?' my uncle blathered, 'I said, 'HOLD THE FUCKING LIP!' ' it washed over me that this wasn't a request for a particular sort of cold Thunderbird, this was my uncle's special way of saying 'thank you for the great service' in advance. Ah, white trash cultural rememberences...RIP Fresh Liquors, RIP. Fresh Liquors, Kiev 60. Ilford Delta 400. Are you telling everyone that you should tell about Toy Polloy? Comment (9) | Permalink |
