Finally... The Publix Story

As promised, here is my story from my shopping trip to Publix a few weeks ago. I hope it lives up to its anticipation. Every Friday, I stop by Publix on Whitesburg Drive on my way home from work to take advantage of their awesome sales and buy whatever I might need for the next week. More often than not, I will let the bag boy take my groceries out. I never let the bag girls take out my groceries; that just seems weird to me.

So, a couple of weeks ago when I stopped in, the bag “boy” was an older man by the name of Durwood. Durwood is a short little man with solid white hair and a great personality. Some of the bag boys are less than personable or at least I find that it’s hard to carry on a conversation with some of them; but, I did not have this problem with Durwood. He was raring to talk.

As we strolled out to my car, Durwood began to tell me that he had asked the manager at Publix about putting up a display of his books. My first thought was, “What the heck kind of books?” He said that the manager was more than willing to put up a display, but that it would have to be approved by the corporate office. I guess they don’t want a surprise corporate visitor showing up with an unapproved display sitting in the store. He then told me all about what his display was going to look like and how he was going to go ahead and build a demo so he could take some photos of it and submit them to corporate.

All the while, I’m wondering what kind of books Durwood is talking about (by this time all my groceries were in the car and we were just chatting). I finally asked him about these books and he said that he had written some novels and they are for sale on Amazon. He asked me if I was familiar with Amazon and I tried hard not to laugh in his face considering I’m on Amazon almost every day.

He then proceeded to tell me about the first book he wrote, “Anthrax Conspiracy” and gave me some details about it, complete with voice inflection and cliff hangers. It was great! He told me about the love affairs of his fictional characters as if they were his own friends or family and then he told me how in his follow up novel he corrected some things and made one character the lover of a different character and so on and so forth. All the while he was grabbing my arm and laughing and we were really having a great time. He told me if I ordered the book to just bring it on in to Publix and he would autograph it for me. He said, “A lot of the ladies bring books in for me to sign.” Clearly Durwood is quite the ladies man in south Huntsville.

A few days later, I looked it up on Amazon and sure enough there were a couple of Durwood’s books including “Anthrax Conspiracy”. I haven’t ordered one yet, but as soon as I do and it arrives, I will be taking it down to the Publix on Whitesburg to get Durwood to autograph it for me.

Durwood was a really sweet man and I enjoyed talking with him. I kept wondering why it is he was working at Publix. I never asked him; but, I assume he really enjoys the company of other people and meeting them and talking to him and obviously increasing his books sales by doing so. I sure hope Publix lets Durwood put up a display of his books. I can just see him sitting at a Publix book signing talking to all the ladies!