Cold War Fallout
I’m like a lot of South Enders, I have to drive into Stanwoodopolis to do my weekly grocery shopping. I used to get the essentials down at Tyee Grocery before it closed, but when I needed milk that wouldn’t spoil in two days or vegetables that weren’t hairy, I moseyed down to the big stores, you know, the chains, QFC, Haggens, Thrifty. I used to like Thrifty myself. Aisles looked like bowling alleys there were so few shoppers there by the end of its slow death spiral into grocery oblivion. No amenities, no cute historical photos, no signs pointing to the restrooms where a bouquet of flowers might beckon a sensitive male shopper like myself.
No, it was spartan. Sparse. Practically primitive. I didn’t waste time talking to other shoppers like I do in the other stores. There weren’t any other shoppers. Just me. It was almost like they’d set out this smorgasbord of lefse and lutefisk and canned entrails just for my perusal. I appreciated it. Even if I didn’t buy it.
Sometimes there WERE other people in the store. It was like a 24 hour store, really, and we were in there on break from our graveyard shift, zombies on parade. We’d drift by the macaroni and meet again by the fruit stand. The fluorescent glare gave a wonderful green patina to everyone. Ghoulish. Night of the Living Zucchini. My fellow shoppers at Thrifty were like myself: shopping challenged. Xenophobes in search of an empty aisle. It was a little like a suspense movie. You know, you know as sure as Alfred Hitchcock is going to shock you, that we were all going to meet at the checkout stand. The ONE checkout stand. No express. No 10 items or less. No Other Way Out.
Our carts bumped ominously. The tabloids were chock-a-block with the latest on movie stars and their sorry sex lives. Little books told me my astrological future. My astrological future was this: I will die in a checkout line waiting for the nice but senile lady in front of me to find all her coupons. She won’t remember to get them out first. No, she’ll remember them when the final amount has been tabulated. She’ll want a lottery ticket. A pack of cigarettes from the lockup six aisles away. She wants a price check on the cereal she thought was 52 cents, but was really $5.20. She’ll mention the spoiled milk she wants a refund on. And finally she’ll change her mind from plastic to paper.
I don’t want to sound misogynistic, but it was always a lady. Guys don’t care. They would do anything to get out of here, not delay their departure. This is hell to us. Eternity. No escape. We would sell our worthless souls if we could just slip by this sweet senile lady in the fuzzy slippers and move on out to the sunlit parking lot with our pathetic bag of groceries. Pop that first beer right there in front of all the moms with their wide-eyed kids in tow and toss the empty through the rolled down window when we’re done.
It’s going to take awhile….. I know that. I’m prepared usually. Mentally, physically, psychically. I never learned, you see. Why is it people can’t have their checks ready? Half filled out? Why can’t they have their purses open? Why do they have to search for the 3 pennies in the bottom somewhere so they won’t have to break a buck? Why don’t they know about the debit/credit thing? Why isn’t paper and plastic automatic, not a life or death quiz question? Why isn’t God doing something about this????
I remember reading in the 70’s about the Russians lining up to buy bread, lining up to buy meat, lining up to buy this, lining up to buy that, always another line at another store. I remember thinking, those goofy communists, they must be the most stupid peasants on earth. Can’t figure out the simplest things….
Some day soon the line would move again there in the DMZ of Thrifty. And I would wonder who really won the Cold War….
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Tags: Cold War Grocery Lines, Did the Russians Win?, Shopping Stanwoodopolis