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To begin with, let me describe the building.
It is one story, about the size of an average house. It is painted blue, with some trim, I am sure. From the fa�ade hang between five and ten mounted deer racks, crowned by a large rack from a bull elk, perhaps. The peak of the building holds the sign, proudly proclaiming, �Grocery.�
When you walk up the store, you first pass three gas pumps, relics of the days before credit cards, even before computers eased the burdens of our lives, concerning gas pumps. The door stands open in the summer heat, with a Marlboro ad hung in its glass pane. Beside the open door is a bulletin board. �Downtown,� it reads, and then goes on with the postings of various families. Such as puppy give-aways, ten family garage sales, and mobile homes for sale clutters the three by two surface.
When you enter, someone will glance at you from the cash register area, to see who you are. Mild detachment. No one really wants you to be there. To the left is a little alcove, bravely attempting to be uptown and well put together. It would almost succeed, were it not for where it is. For, to the right of the door are the cash registers. Old, friendly machines. Cluttered notebooks, used to keep things together, to keep track of who plays golf, who tans, who rents movies, which movies are rented, who cannot write checks, who has credit, who isn�t allowed credit, who hasn�t paid credit, who owes, which RV spaces are rented on which days, how food stamps may be used, how much milk, bread, pop, beer, cigarettes cost, everything is in the Grocery. The glass of the main counter is scratched from decades of coins crossing it, the secondary counter is merely painted blue in an attempt to fit in. The aforementioned notes are liberally pasted about, to the friendly cash registers, to anything that has a vertically viewable surface. Between the two registers is an ancient weighing mechanism. For sure, nothing has been accurately weighed there, in this age of the digital scale. It mostly serves as a message board.
Beyond the entry, is the food. The wonderful food. And beer, pop. The items someone might want on an off chance fill two of the three aisles. They are dusty, and have a shelf life of a thousand years. Oh, perfectly healthy to eat. Just dusty. In the drug section of the store resides a heavily miscellaneous mish-mash. The aspirin, the pads, the deodorant, the fishing lures, the notebooks, the car oil. Some products have been on the shelf for years-one only has to look at the fading boxes and know that. It amuses the hell out of me to dust them.
Beer goes fast at the Grocery. The cooler has two or three flats of Pepsi, twenty or so cases of beer with at least as many half cases, six-packs, twenty-four ouncers, and any number of bottled beer that the more affluent might pick up on their way home from work. Three full refrigerators are reserved for beer, and the space extends if you add wine coolers and wine. Then there is a (singular) cooler of milk, and then four or five of pop. Pop is a very big seller, for some reason. This is in the most traveled aisle. Also on this aisle are the chips and the candy. If there is change, and there are children, you can almost bet they�ll be back with penny candy pretty soon.
So, the people, you ask. What of them? Are they drear, colorful, does anyone even come into this unsung corner of a place? Well, my dear, they come. They come, and sometimes I wish they wouldn�t. There is the twelve or thirteen year old girl. Her nose is so high in the air, I cannot catch sight of it, as I tower six inches above her. Her dark hair bushes about her head, her sleepy, annoyed eyes pretend not to see me. She wears shoes that are at least a half size too big, with thick three inch heals. She totters down the aisle, trying so hard to be grown-up, trying too hard to be a bitch. She�s succeeding. Where do these children become adults, with their snobby ideas? What annoys me about her? That she snubs me, that she looks down at me?
Also, there are the welfare children, their parents. Mostly, these head for the junk food. Chips, pop, and candy are bought with food stamps. What does this gain? I don�t know. I want to weep for them, but I won�t. I want to beat the government. But mostly, I want them to know that they are the same as me. I don�t want to look down, and I want to smile. Their money is the same as mine; it is worth the same. If I take it, I must accept this. They are the same as me. I treat them as people. And, learning from the Kotex packaging, I don�t say �I understand.� I don�t. But I can a least treat them like people.
A woman, young, pretty. She comes to the store. Gay told me that I should watch her, that she looks like a good girl, but she isn�t. She hurts me. She came to the store strung out one day, with her boyfriend, I assume. She flinched and shrank from him, her face was filled with fear. She bought bread and beer. She is always honest with me. I want to trust her so badly. She came in one day with her son. She is a wonderful mother. Her little boy is so friendly, so sweet. And his mother, the strung out, stressed out, how is she? She is a wonderful mother, with a horrible life. And all I can offer her is a smile.
There are the young men. Oh, the young men. I like to look at them. They offer variety, for they are the ones who are likely to look back. The good looking grandchildren, or nephews. They come in for pop, and leave with my grin. They don�t talk to me. At least, not yet. The ones that are traveling, never. The ones I know, okay, they talk to me. But they�re not nearly so fun.
There are the lonely men, middle aged and old alike. They come in as often as they can find an excuse. All they want is company, even the company of busy women clerks. They just want to talk. One, he came in to talk, even though he can�t hear. He�ll talk all day, if you let him. Another walks to the store, to visit with the customers, to BS with the clerks. A few women come in, too. They want to talk about their lives to someone who doesn�t know the story by heart. Or maybe they just want some adult, or female company. Who knows. The only one that won no sympathy with me was the one that cuffed her child while trying to engage my attention with a half-muttered comment about her husband.
Maybe I�m just a younger version of a maternal old bat. My flock, as I tend to think of them in the privacy of my mind. But I like people. Most people, that is. Some just bug me. But the people who accept that they are people, not smaller versions of God, they touch me. They are living lives as best they can, they are lonely, happy, poor, or just a little drunk. I sell them food, cigarettes, beer, and pop, and touch only the tiniest part of their lives. But I enjoy them. They bring variety to my life.
So maybe the Grocery isn�t an evil place, a dull place. Sometimes the sheer crudity of people astounds me. But mostly, the human race delights me, all their faces. In youth, middle age, all.
So come visit me, at the the Grocery. I�ll be the tall brunette in slightly outdated clothes and Birkenstocks, standing at register number two. I work every other weekend, and Mondays. I�ll give you a mildly detached look, and then say hello. But I really am glad you�re there. I like people, even if the Grocery has dust on its shelves and a whole lot of beer in its cooler.
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