When I reached the back of the produce section at the grocery store, I saw my father-in-law, judging bananas. He looked up and saw me, but did not acknowledge my presence - something of a relief, since he’d been dead for four years. I tried to separate two green bananas from a bunch of five, taking care not to crack the stem from the bananas I wanted . He seemed to recognize me now, and disapprove. I’m sorry, I thought, but I don’t need five bananas. I live alone and they go mushy. The dead don’t show up too often at this store, but they do from time to time, and that might be a problem, except that the prices are just so low. They’re half what pay everywhere else. They don’t mention it in the ads; Ii’s just understood that you’ll run into the dead from time to time. You get used to seeing elderly people and wondering if they’re alive, or somebody else’s apparition. I’m not sure how it works and there’s nothing on the grocery stores “about” webpage.
As he walked away, he looks less less like my father-in-law, but still like a man who disapproved a banana bunch -breaking. I walked over to the tomato section to get some Roma tomatoes for a pasta sauce, and saw the stock boy taking every tomato off the shelf and putting them back in a box. You could only conclude there was something wrong with the tomatoes, and you would never know what it was. Oh, you could call up the FDA webpage and look for a recall, right there in the store, but why bother.
I hadn’t really come in for tomatoes or bananas. I was there for ice cream. It was Tuesday night, and I end Tuesday nights with the scoop of good ice cream – peanut butter and chocolate, if I can find the right brand at the right price. But this time there was a sale yes even lower prices! On the house brand, so I wondered back to the coolers. The sign said special: $3.99. I looked for the sea salt caramel, which was particularly good. There wasn’t any there was a sign that said sea-salt caramel. And the space above it was entirely empty. Every other flavor was stocked to abundance. I saw a stock boy, and I waved him over; he was a friend in high school who committed suicide, but without the eager needy grin, my friend had. I asked if they had more sea salt caramel. He frowned, and my friend fled from his features.
“If there isn’t any,”he said, “we’re out.”
Now I was in the position of buying two bananas, and nothing else. On a credit card, no less. I put the bananas back and left, feeling a bit guilty about tearing them off the bunch. Father-in-law had been right about me.
A few hours later we were coming back from the dog walk, and I decided to take some boxes to the storage facility. As one does. If so, why not go to the other store in the chain, and see if they had the sea salt caramel? After I stowed the boxes, I noted that the storage closet was starting to get orderly again. This was a great relief. There's hope.
The packing and boxing and sorting process had gone like this:
Step one: pack things carefully in boxes with a keen eye for organization, and reconstitution of your world when the move is done. Boxes are numbered, contents noted in the notes app.
Step two: start putting things in boxes without particular care, because you’ve run out of clean, easily- identifiable categories like “Books” or “things for shelves” or “dishes.” A box ends up containing baby shoes, father’s model car, chargers, an so on. No order.
Step three: time draws nigh to move; mad rush to dump things in boxes. You’ll figure it out later
Step Four: you’re taking trash bags of clothes and coats and grocery bags full of loose dog food
For the last week I’ve been taking boxes out, moving them to Fred Base One, and winnowing the things no one will care about. Sometimes I like having objects that appear in old family photos, like Daughter’s Mickey Mouse ears from a trip to Disneyworld.
I found an envelope of grade school stuff. I had no idea they made us draw political cartoons. (The bottle says “Mao Tse Tung POWER.”)
Must have been the spelling of the day.
After 1949, Lin Bioa initially withdrew from active politics. He served as a Vice Premier from 1954 and as one of the Vice Chairmen of the Chinese Communist Party from 1958, before assuming the additional post of Minister of National Defense in 1959. In the early 1960s he played a key role in cultivating Mao Zedong's cult of personality, and was rewarded during the Cultural Revolution by being designated Mao's sole successor as the Party's only Vice Chairman, a position he held from 1966 until his death.
Lin would die in an air crash, which was probably arranged.
Anyway, I threw out a lot of things, but not the cards from Daughter. And not all the cards from Wife, although a scan of the sentiments makes me sigh. So: Four boxes down to four, put in stackable boxes, and placed in Zork Storage.
Then the grocery story, a quick highway drive. I went straight back to ice cream, and saw they had sea-salt caramel in abundance. But the price was wrong. It wasn’t on sale. The other store-brand gelatos and some other store-brand pints were on sale, but not the sea-salt caramel. Did I go to the manager and point out that the sign on the glass at the other store indicated that all varieties were on sale, given its position in the middle of the window? I did. They scanned: no, not on sale, but others were. I reiterated that the sign at the other store made no distinctions, it just gave a sale price. I noted that the other store had no sea-salt, so I’d come here to see if they did. She called up an inventory app and confirmed that the other store did not have any, I was correct. A higher manager was called. She was informed of the situation and considered the situation.
What I would not have said: “I drove all the way here based on the sign, and now you’re saying you won’t honor it?”
What I would have said if she’d said “sorry, it’s not on sale”: ah, that’s too bad, I think I’ll wait until it is
What I did say when she said “since you drove all the way here, I’ll adjust the price”: Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
And so I got the ice cream at the good price.
Also notable today: Daughter texted that she was off to a shoot for one of the agency’s clients, and I told her to get a short story out of it. I said I was heading into the grocery store and would attempt to do the same. I did see a guy that looked like my father-in-law. Part of the story is what you read at the top. For the rest . . . well, that’s a year away.
It’s 1969.
A live newspaper for a live town!
This makes sense to me. One would make plaster-of-Paris busts according to one’s rank. I remember doing p-o-p projects, with wet gluey newspaper. I placed them around a balloon, shaped a prominent nose, and said it wsas Charles DeGaulle. I cut a hole in the top for coins and called it a Franc Bank.
It was a staple of childhood, and then . . . no more?
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The days before HIIPA were something, weren’t they? |
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It is, of course, the High School goings-on column.
"Very interesting" performance, judged not on skill but intention.
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Fun! You’re not having any of it. |
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It’s mother’s day, so the paper is full of ads about what to get her and where to take her to dinner.
Mom does get around
The Iris! Is it still standing? We’ll find out on Thursday.
That will do. Big Substack Miscellany today, for paying customers.
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