BRATTLEBORO — Picture the scene, if you will:
I'm dragging my son through a medium-sized shop-up at Hannaford. We are on the home stretch, in the refrigerator/freezer section, I'm leaning in to get butter, I pop back up from the glass door just as an old lady whizzes past me with her cart.
Instead of apologizing for almost clipping me, she starts shaking her head with the “There's No Accounting for Some Jerks These Days” look on her face. What?
I long to track her down, ask where she got a sense of self-entitlement that allowed her to non-verbally imply that I was the idiot in our little freezer aisle do-si-do. It was only the fact that this is a small town, and I have a taxpayer supported job, that stopped me from unloading on her.
Every time, I long to start a verbal tirade that would cause moms to hustle their children away, while other folks stand by watching with half-expectant smiles on their faces (borne of the pleasure of having their boring grocery shopping spiced up with a mild altercation and the delicious feeling of realizing “Thank heavens this isn't me”).
I resist retorting because I don't want to see the “Local Librarian Goes Loco” headline in our local rag. But if it ever happens, I hope they have fun with it, work the citation angle, perhaps, maybe opine that I was overdue for some R and R based on my tirade.
* * *
So, there I am pushing my cart, that, if it was powered by my umbrage, would be flying through the walls like a runaway mule team, mentally muttering comebacks like “I hope your day gets better, lady; so sorry I almost ruined it all for you by somehow being too close to your shopping cart.”
Minutes go by, I'm still steamed, so I say to my son: “Ugh, I am still so mad at that old lady!”
“What did she do?” he asks.
“Well, she was just getting so upset about such a stupid, little thing!”
And then my boy drops the gentle wisdom bomb on me that made the entire black mass of anger and pissiness evaporate.
“But now you are getting upset about stupid little things.”
Huh. So I am.
I have no intention of turning into the wrinkled mass of pure uck I encountered while buying butter (I didn't think anything bad could happen while purchasing butter).
So, for maybe the seventh time in my life, I actually let something go. Thanks, kid. I owe ya one.
* * *
Now, my kids rarely attend the shop-ups that go on in the gleaming, air-conditioned splendor of the chain supermarket we favor in town.
Both have their own reasons for supporting the maternal solo excursion for foodstuffs. My son does not want to go because he gets so bored he nearly passes out. My daughter peppers me with requests for stuff I refuse to buy every 37 seconds until I nearly pass out.
So we agree: I go alone and honor requests for Popsicles and the like. Stop asking for weird s-. Unless dad is shopping, there won't be any weird s- in the house.
In general, the tribe tends to howl pretty badly when unavoidable supermarket excursions loom into their happy existence.
However, their attitude about food shopping changed when we stumbled into the exciting world of the Route 9 Discount store.
Now, the actual layout was way worse than our regular food store: instead of wide aisles and cool air, you get narrow aisles, creepy, buzzing fluorescents and pitifully stinky bums (PSBs).
And the PSBs were often way too helpful. “Ya need me to hold those ten jars-a-tomata sauce for ya honey?” one bum hopefully asked my daughter on a typical visit.
Despite the dismal surroundings, the atmosphere quivered with delicious expectation and possibility. From all of us.
Myself, I'd go after Devonshire Cream for 79 cents (normally $8 for a tiny jar); gorgeous, rough-shaped sugar cubes perfect for Old Fashioneds; fancy tea that folks weren't willing to buy at the regular price.
What I've realized about discount stores is that they have bottom-barrel dreck, absolutely. But right alongside the dreck sits super-fancy s- that was not only too expensive for the typical Yankee shopper, it's just too odd, or too difficult to use.
A typical reaction from me at Rt. 9 Discount store: “Yay! They have jaggery!”
I think my kids liked going to Rt. 9 Discount because no matter what we might have found there, they would hear their favorite word over and over, whatever the request: Yes.
Yes, I will buy the giant bag of Dum Dum suckers, the bucket of sour mesquite fruit Twizzlers, the weird cookies from Guam, the Pineapple Colada Cola. Why ever not? All these items together total $4.38.
And not only was the store a treasure cave of crazy candy for the kids, it was also a museum of odd comestibles that never failed to fascinate and educate.
Supermarkets hold no such surprises. There, you find bananas. Wow. Rt. 9 Discount? Banana ramen noodles. Wow.
It was in this atmosphere of glee at knowing anything in the store was yours, yet having no idea just what it might be (or in many cases, what is actually was), that my son and I stumbled onto the 50-percent-poignant, 50-percent-hilarious leftover Easter candy bunny “The Professor.”
His chocolate head had broken away from his neck, the yellow candy eyes were pressed against the thick cellophane window. Who knows what kind of journey he had been on that landed him at the at this dead-end for all things edible.
“The Professor,“ at $1.49, had a pathetic traveling companion on the shelf to hold his chocolate paw, “Parsnip Pete.” We bought him, and Parsnip Pete. Pete was going for 99 cents.
Obviously we are always in a giddy mood when we are in this store (banana ramen has that effect), but the day we found “The Professor,” the high spirits were fueled by that kind of crazed emotion that comes from knowing the fun would end soon.
We were, in fact, shopping at Rt. 9 for the very last time. We had heard the rumors for a few weeks. The cashier with the tattooed neck had mentioned that it was slated to close. Something about how “they weren't making enough money.”
Huh. Selling soup for 39 cents a can, and you can't cover your nut? Who would've thunk?
So, we encountered this uhh... Egg-Headed Easter Bunny (sorry!) and couldn't just leave him there. Not with his chocolate head askew, the blue candy pupils dilated in agony.
It's all for the best, anyway. What kid today would want this Palmer relic greeting them on Easter morning? And how did a stuffy intellectual persona even make it as a Palmer Rabbit mold?
If I was a good journalist I'd be on the phone to Palmer headquarters, getting the scoop on this antiquated ideal of a chocolate Easter rabbit. I bet they've been pouring this mold since the 1950s, back when our society fell in love with mocking the cerebral types.
Hey, Palmer marketing types, time to review your rabbit molds!
* * *
Now the Rt. 9 Discount store is closed down. Empty. No more size 45 pants, brown-stained, for a dollar. No more diet martini mixer, no more wall of outdated, sugar-crusted breakfast cereal from supermarket chains throughout the Northeast.
I'm back to shopping alone at Hannaford. Pushing my cart while avoiding mean old ladies, missing the bums.