{"id":8489,"date":"2021-10-31T14:25:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T20:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8489"},"modified":"2021-10-31T15:25:20","modified_gmt":"2021-10-31T21:25:20","slug":"the-garbanzo-gangster","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8489","title":{"rendered":"The Garbanzo Gangster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Colin Kemp<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often cook beans in my Instant Pot. What kinds? I have black turtle beans, red kidney beans, white navy beans. I have pinto beans, lima beans, fava beans. I even have garbanzo beans. But until recently, I wouldn\u2019t know a garbanzo bean if I came face-to-face with one in vodka aisle of Liquor Mountain\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n

I was at the liquor store, minding my own business, trying to find the cheapest vodka on a per-unit basis. I\u2019m not fooled by fancy bottles and labels with pictures of old-time mustaches and words like \u2018craft\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there I was at the liquor store, minding my own business, doing the math, when I was approached by a short, corpulent, middle-aged man wearing round eyeglasses glasses\u2014the kind once in fashion with crypto-fascists and jingoists. His skin was a uniform tan colour, and he wore tan overcoat that gave him a bland appearance overall, especially because his hair was also a tan-like colour\u2014sandy blond, really\u2014and his shoes were tan suede. Plus, he wore tan khaki pants, the kind with the permanent crease in the front\u2014although they were also extremely wrinkled, so the prim effect evoked by the crease was nullified. His shirt\u2014tan, linen, threadbare\u2014looked like burlap. He wore gloves, leather\u2014you guessed it, tan. At first, I didn\u2019t see him at all, but detected a waft of\u2026it smelled exactly <\/em>like my Instant Pot does after the steam is released. That was the smell\u2014bland, earthy. Like beans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ignored it in case the smell was coming from me. Which it wasn\u2019t, but it was a distinct possibility. Anyway, I was holding a bottle of vodka with a black-and-white label depicting some guy who looks like hipster cult leader. It was called \u2018Rasputin\u2019s Revenge\u2019. And it was craft vodka, of course. Which meant it cost about 1.82 cents more per milliliter than my standard go-to, Kirkland Signature American Vodka in a 1.75 liter bottle. Too bad they don\u2019t make a non-Signature version. Anyway, I was inspecting the hipster on the label when this bland man reached out with his tan glove hand and grabbed the neck of the bottle and started pulling!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey!\u201d I said. I\u2019m inspecting that!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was just about to release the bottle\u2014I wasn\u2019t going to buy it anyway\u2014when he bit my hand! For a guy who looked like a large ball of wax, he moved like a cobra. I fell to the ground and screamed in pain and cradled my hand. The man stuffed the bottle into his overcoat and waddled for the door and disappeared out onto the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the manager rushed over with a first-aid kit. I thought it would be cool if he opened a bottle of vodka and poured it over my wound to sanitize it, but instead he took a little iodine wipe out of the kit and applied it. Then he put a band-aid over the wound. \u201cYou\u2019re going to need to get a tetanus shot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The assistant manager helped me up. \u201cI\u2019ve already called the police, Mr. Holmes,\u201d he said to the manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you, Charles,\u201d Mr. Holmes said. Then he turned to me. \u201cOn behalf of Liquor Mountain, I sincerely apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By now I had regained my composure. \u201cThat\u2019s alright,\u201d I said, \u201cIt\u2019s not your fault, nor is it Liquor Mountain\u2019s. It was that strange man…he seemed to really like that brand of vodka. Me, I\u2019m indifferent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly, two uniformed police officers arrived to take my statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, he was short, round, had tan-colour skin, a tan trench coat, tan gloves, tan shoes, tan hair, and round eyeglasses, like a fascist? Is that correct?\u201d one of the officers recapitulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes. Or a jingoist,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wrote that down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just then a third police officer joined us, this time a detective. \u201cHello,\u201d he said, \u201cMy name is Detective Yob. I\u2019ve been trying to track down this suspect for months.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh yeah?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, we call him the \u2018Garbanzo Gangster\u2019. We\u2019ll have to review the CCTV security footage, but it sounds like this is our man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGarbanzo Gangster?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes. It\u2019s because he is described by his other victims as looking exactly like a large garbanzo bean.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh.\u201d I said, scratching my head. \u201cIf you ask me, he looked more like a chickpea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The detective stared at me intensely, his steel grey eyes scrutinizing me, negatively impacting my well-being. Then he sighed. \u201cIt\u2019s the exactly same thing,\u201d he said. He shook his head disapprovingly and then addressed one of the uniformed officers. \u201cDoesn\u2019t anyone know their beans anymore?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n

When I entered my apartment after returning from the hospital for my tetanus shot, I was temporarily overcome with a wave of panic\u2014until I realized that the smell was not the Garbanzo Gangster, but simply my Instant Pot, which was had entered its Keep Warm holding pattern. I opened the lid and savored the earthy chickpea aroma. Then I went to my computer and googled \u2018chickpeas vs. garbanzo beans\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detective Yob was right\u2014they are exactly the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

COLIN KEMP <\/strong>lives in Ottawa, Canada, where he works as a social scientist. He is currently taking courses in the Creative Writing program at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colin Kemp I often cook beans in my Instant Pot. What kinds? I have black turtle beans, red kidney beans, white navy beans. I have pinto beans, lima beans, fava beans. I even have garbanzo beans. But until recently, I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8485,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8489","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-2cV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8489"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8511,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8489\/revisions\/8511"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}