What Do You Want From the Liquor Store?

What do want from the liquor store?
Something sour or something sweet?
I'll buy all that your belly can hold
You can be sure you won't suffer no more.

~ Ted Hawkins

The radio show This American Life recently aired an episode called "Know When to Fold 'Em" about understanding when bad situations require just walking away and cutting losses. In a segment on Minnesota "wet houses" — hospice-like homes where chronic alcoholics are allowed to drink — Marc Sanchez visited St. Anthony House, such a home in St. Paul.

The story is touching, sad, a searing reminder that — for some people — alcohol is the very demon that prohibitionists have always claimed it is.

At its conclusion, Ted Hawkins' song Sorry You're Sick plays. I'd never heard it before or of Hawkins, the Mississippi native who died in California before I ever set foot here. In the context of the radio show,  Sorry You're Sick was almost gut-wrenching in its simplicity and purity.



Goes well with:

• "Know When to Fold 'Em," the episode from This American Life that  brought Ted Hawkins to my attention and that includes Sanchez's story on St. Anthony House.
• The lyrics to Sorry You're Sick: 

Good morning, my darling, I'm telling you this
to let you know that I'm sorry you're sick
Though tears of sorrow won't do you no good,
I'd be your doctor if only I could.

What do want from the liquor store?
Something sour or something sweet?
I'll buy all that your belly can hold.
You can be sure you won't suffer no more.

I'd swim the ocean or the deepest canal
to get to you darling just to make you well.
There's no place on Earth that I wouldn't hasten to go
to cool the fever; this I want you to know.

What do want from the liquor store?
Something sour or something sweet?
I'll buy all that your belly can hold.
You can be sure you won't suffer no more.

If only the doctor would hurry and show
there's quite a few places I know we could go.
I was ok but these words from you
stating you're sick made me sick, too.

What do want from the liquor store?
Something sour or something sweet?
I'll buy all that your belly can hold.
You can be sure you won't suffer no more.

Promise me darling that you won't die;
I'll get all the medicine that money can buy.
Stick with me baby, hold on and fight
take a good rest I won't prolong the flight

What do want from the liquor store?
Something sour or something sweet?
I'll buy all that your belly can hold.
You can be sure you won't suffer no more.