The Liquor Closet

For the past few months, my friend Simone and I have been volunteering at a jolly little art museum in Southeast Texas. Well, I say jolly. What I really mean is quirky. Different. Odd.

It's an interesting place, like I suppose most art museums are.

When we first arrived, we were greeted by a large, jovial man by the name of Andy who seemed to be twice as tall as me.

"Now y'all gon' be makin' sugar skulls, ain't you excited?" He was giggling. Little did we know, we would be making over a thousand of them in the next few weeks in preparation for a Day of the Dead celebration.
He instructed us to get a few things from the back room before we began. Still a bit shy and uncertain of the layout of the museum, we headed to the back and asked a nice looking lady behind a desk if she could tell us where we might find a large mixing bowl. She smiled a knowing smile and stood up, looking through a set of keys.

"There should be one in the liquor closet," she told us. "You guys get to see our stash."

And what a stash it was. When she said liquor closet, I expected a tiny room tucked off in a corner somewhere. Instead, she approached the largest door in the building and unlocked it. When I looked inside, I was flabbergasted. The room itself was larger than my bedroom at home and was covered in wall-to-wall shelves filled with various bottles of booze.

We stepped inside, and I'm sure I made an idiot of myself gaping at the walls. I had never seen so much hooch in one place, and I certainly hadn't expected there to be such a large collection of alcohol in an art museum. Why would a little art museum need that much liquor? Were all the employees raging alcoholics? I didn't know what to think, but I was certainly amused.

Later that day I realized that they probably had it all there for charity benefits and things of the sort, but for a short while, I was under the impression that I was volunteering for a bunch of drunks.

It does make me wonder what their office holiday parties are like, though...