‘Cardinal ‘Charlie’: Liquor Control Commission dream weird

Published 12:07 pm Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Charlie GillI sure don’t know why, but the other night I had one of my weird dreams.

I seem to be getting more as I near 80.

This one took me way back to when I got my first job for the State of Michigan Liquor Control store in Dowagiac.

We did retail and wholesale.

When a dealer would call an order, it was done by code numbers.

Like 692 for a case of 12 was for fifths of Seagram’s 7-Crown.

We would take the order, then on a blank order form we wrote this down and looked up on a pricing sheet the cost.

We had to write the order, then with an old hand-crank adding machine cost it out.
I didn’t even have a desk when I started, just a stool and table.

Later on, I got a better adding machine (electric).

After that, a calculator. And finally, two years before I retired, a computer, which meant no more handwriting.

I sometimes wonder how I survived those 33 1/2 years.

My son, who knows I’m into all different kinds of coins, gave me one recently that he got from a friend of his when he was in the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg years ago.

His friend was a sergeant in the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

It is a beautiful coin.

Barry told me when these guys would go into a bar, one would slap his coin on the bar followed by the other guys.

The last guy to put his coin on the bar, or didn’t have a coin, bought the drinks.
I also have a U.S. Army coin dated 2009. My wife got one of these scam letters that was talked about in the police news recently in the Daily News.

I guess they don’t think us senior citizens have any smarts.

Last week when I was putting out the garbage, I heard a lot of squawking geese.

They came from the northwest and headed southeast, towards the Mill Pond (I don’t know if there was any open water there or not).

There were several really big blocks and a few smaller ones (I bet there were more than 150 at least). They flew low enough over my driveway they could have been brought down by a shotgun.

I first heard this saying years ago from a friend corresponder of mine, Floyd Gifford, an old Dowagiac boy who went to school with my mother years ago. They were both born in 1891. He wrote me he also went to school with Webb Miller.

Mr. Gifford and I wrote to each other about six years before he died at age 102.

He had me send him a picture of my house and he made a good-sized picture of it using crayons and some sandpaper.

He did this when he was 102 years old and it was the last picture he did, according to his widow down in Vero Beach, Fla.

I have in my file all the letters he sent to me, plus a tape he made of his memories of old Dowagiac.

And, of course, his 10-cent crayon picture of my house hangs on my bedroom wall (I’ve written about Mr. Gifford in my articles before).

Recently I told Peg, gosh, I’ve known quite a few people who have made it to 100 or over.

Besides Floyd Gifford (102), Devere Wade (103), Grace Hart (106), Ardelle Gard (101) Mollie Behnke (100) and, I think, Pearl Ferebee was over 100 also.

A friend, Myrta Rupp, was 99 and close to 100, plus my kindergarten teacher, Dorothy Lee Armin, was 99 before she died.

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City.
E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.