No. 625 – Blood on the Rooftops

Performer: Genesis

Songwriters: Steve Hackett, Phil Collins

Original Release: Wind and Wuthering

Year: 1976

Definitive Version: None

When we left our intrepid Christmas shopper, he was looking for the perfect gift for his girlfriend only to find misery and the grim realization that he was no longer in the Christmas spirit.

Yes, my search for a perfume atomizer for Beth was coming up as dry as a good martini. And it seemed that desperate times called for desperate measures. That meant a trip to the Penney’s outlet store.

Penney opened its outlet store on the East side of Columbus while I was a junior in high school, and when it opened, you would have thought no one had ever seen a department store before. It was constantly packed. The first time I went was with Mike, but I was underwhelmed by the merchandise. It seemed to be where your parents shopped, not me.

But if any store in Columbus would have an atomizer, surely the Penney’s outlet store would have it. This was a commitment. The store was beyond I-270, which ringed the city and almost as far away from Upper Arlington that you can get while still being in the Columbus metropolitan area. The trip would kill an entire afternoon, but if it had what I was seeking, it would be worth it.

It wasn’t worth it, and all was for naught.

Of course, in retrospect, I should have gone to second-hand stores, but aside from where I went on High Street with Jin and Scott, I had no idea where else I might find such a store.

I was beat. Yes, I had a few other things, including the big present—some jewelry—but the atomizer was the cherry on top of the sundae. Beth loved anything that looked like it was classy and a hundred years old. It really was the perfect gift.

And it was with remorse that I went into the Esco a few blocks from home, a couple of days before Christmas to get a present for someone else. Did you ever have Esco? It was a weird store. It had a small showroom with a few small things out but catalogs everywhere. You wrote the merchandise that you wanted on a slip. Then a clerk would send the slip back to the back room where someone else would find the item and bring it to you. It was like a call department store.

But what was that behind the counter? It … WAS!! An atomizer!! Pink crystal, too. Oh, it was a thing of beauty, and had I been made aware of the possibilities of the yes-yes dance, I would’ve done it then and there. I would have paid $200 for the item, but I only had to pay $30.

Isn’t that allegorical? You go everywhere to looking for something, and you find it was nearby all along. Being 22, however, I had no time for allegories. Give me the damn atomizer. Ah yes, it would be a merry Christmas after all.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as merry as it could have been. Don’t get me wrong: Beth loved the present, but Scott came to midnight mass with us and then to the late-night after-party at a family friend’s home, where we were treated to our first Irish coffee. (He was 15.) But that also meant, of course, that he came back to the house where Beth and I exchanged presents, so Beth wasn’t able to thank me as properly as she might have otherwise.

Alas, this time, I couldn’t buy him off with a Twenty. But that’s a story for another time.