THE BATTLE OF THE SHOPPING CARTS

I wonder, as I do each time I do the shopping at the local Costco store; where do these people come from? My mother and grandmother would stare in confusion to the crowds of people from other countries, all speaking in their own language. and all at the same time.

Costco no longer offers a wheelchair for those of us too lazy to maneuver the aisles, so I take my own walker in order to sit upon whilst waiting for Dr. A to come and relieve me of what part of the list I have been able to stuff into my cart.

The majority of customers I see shopping here are from some part of Asia, however there are a great number of people who seem to be from the Middle East. I am quite happy to realize that I no longer wish to to visit their countries, simply because they are all here.

We continue to be disappointed in the manners of fellow shoppers who apparently have not learned the English words for “Excuse me”, “Sorry”, “Thank you”, and “Yes please”; this last in receiving a sample from the food vendor. I forgive them though, as long as they continue to pick up a word here and there of our language. I would be the same in their country.

I won’t go into the subject of child rearing. It is painful to watch small children scream and slap their parent/grandparent because of the lack of their attention. I was always under the impression that children from another country were quiet and well behaved, as opposed to our own. After all, the ploy my mother used to get me to finish my dinner plate was to make me aware of all the starving children in China, so I always held a certain amount of pity for the poor kids.

In the crowded post office the other day, while a mother was trying to make herself understood at the counter, her rotten little boy was screaming for her attention. As a mother,, grandmother, great-grandmother and former teacher, I admit that I didn’t even try to stifle myself when I glared at him with narrowed eyes and yelled “STOP THAT”! His mother looked around vaguely and patted his head.

I don’t remember that shopping was such an experience in the old days. In fact, my mother had our groceries delivered, and I did the same from the same market when I was first married. The small store we frequented was family owned and hired a couple of high school boys to deliver. I had a mighty crush on one boy while I was still in high school. As is the habit of all people, male or female when hormones begin to be active, I found I needed to go to the store more often than necessary simply to gaze upon the object of my desire. He finally invited me to the movies. In preparation I sprayed myself liberally with my grandmother’s Shalimar perfume, which is either a powerful aphrodisiac or equally powerful bug killer. We took the bus from Alameda to Oakland. both of which put him in close proximity to the intoxicating stench.

He didn’t ask me out again, but he eventually married and divorced the girl who became my maid of honor. We saw him again last year at our 70th class reunion, on his walker with his son accompanying him. He was a nice boy and I’m glad he made it one more time.

SECOND HAND ROSE

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. What used to be called “second hand stores” now are euphemistically known as “thrift stores which sometimes peddle high-end goods to economically savvy shoppers. Not as snooty as antique stores, but a step up from a junk store. In other words, they attract smart people who watch their pennies. Barbra Streisand wailing “Second Hand Rose” gave us a taste of what you could buy second hand.

We ran across a good example a week or so ago in San Juan Baptista when we spotted a great-looking junk store along the road called “Fat Willie’s which carried every sort of miscellany anyone could ever want. Roaming through the town itself we were drawn into “Fat Willie’s Antiques”; a store which brooked no bargaining, but which carried your grandmother’s china and furniture made by fellows like Chippendale, Duncan Phyfe and Hans Wegner (my personal favorite). Between the two stores, Willie was covering all the bases.

As a child my grandmother dragged me along to antique stores while she looked for old china and crystal pieces. I still have a crystal sugar bowl with a broken handle she gave me when I was 14.

In 1942, after the Depression was over, but while the War was still on, my grandmother, mother and aunt showed up each wearing fur coats. It was the first I ever heard that you could buy something that someone else had already used. A real Second Hand Store with “hand-me-downs”. Now, in case you have ever wondered, that term was used by Jewish immigrant merchants who sometimes hung garments on high racks, and when someone asked to see a certain piece would tell his associate to “hand me down” that coat or whatever.

At the suggestion of a friend some years ago, I volunteered my services to the Ladies Home Society in Oakland, California, a charity for the benefit of elderly ladies of refinement. My job was in the small thrift shop sorting through all manner of goods, including clothes, furniture, linen, etc. donated by the members. As first responders, we had first choice in pricing and perhaps purchasing the good stuff. I bought so many clothes that my children laughingly told me they would have to give it all back to Grandma’s Attic when I died. I was so naive at the time I could not believe that some of the lovely embroideries, handmade lace and household goods would not be cherished by children of those who were donating their belongings. Older and wiser friends assured me that the style favored by the next generation doesn’t always include their parent’s residual possessions, but donated clothing, especially beautiful clothing, has great appeal.

Today’s Thrift Stores seem to come in two types: non-profit and those which can make a lot of money for their owners. We knew of someone whose family had three large thrift stores. We keep a box in the garage for things we no longer use and donate to Hope Services, a local non-profit store which gives to the mentally challenged, a group our daughter worked for after college where she had majored in the mentally challenged. We have a well-decked out friend who proudly shows off his “bargain” attire which he picked up at a thrift store after serious and judicious shopping.

When I was teaching pottery classes, I encouraged students to donate their “failures” to a thrift store. After all, “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure”, and something handmade is infinitely better than a cheap import.

BEYOND THE BOTTOM LINE

When I was a little girl in what, God forbid, might be called the “olden days,” I had a great many relationships with stores and the people in them. I went grocery shopping with my mother and with my grandmother and sometimes with my great aunt where Piggley-Wiggley was a regular, and See’s candy a treat. The milk and produce stores came to us, and were sometimes good for maybe an apple or a bunch of grapes. I remember butcher shops because you could write your name with your toe in the sawdust on the floor.

Knott’s Berry Farm, Buena Park, California 1920

We played store which was easy because all you needed was a board and something to balance it on like a couple of chairs, and a few cans from your mother’s pantry. I was caught in the act one day by my father coming home early to find me “selling” flowers off the front porch steps, flowers I had liberated from a neighbor’s garden. So I went out of the floral business.

Escher, maybe an idea of what early stores looked like in a crowded town.

As time went on, stores moved up and became multi storied.

The business of making all these stores attractive became important, as did the business of enticing people into them. The stores with the expensive merchandise were the most fun, and I once even considered the impossible desire to actually live in one.

Think of it: elevators to take you upstairs, restaurants, departments catering to all your needs. Everything to make life pleasant and all under one roof.

When we moved to Alameda, we often took the ferry to San Francisco where the really big stores were; The City of Paris, I. Magnin, the stuff of dreams. My mother and grandmother and I would sweep into the glove department at the White House and begin the ritual of buying a pair of gloves. You didn’t just point to a pair and say “I’ll take that one.” The saleslady would put your elbow on a a little velvet pillow and place her elbow alongside yours, as though poised for an Indian wrestle. She would turn and flip open several of the hundreds of little drawers that lined the wall. She then placed a number of small packets of gloves on the counter and then began the effort to try them on your hand. This was not something to take lightly, as it might take several tries to get just the right glove. It was almost as much fun as hats!

Years later, taking my daughters to these same stores, I confessed my early urge to dwell in these marble halls.

When we moved to Seattle, I found my dream in the Frederick & Nelson store in downtown Seattle.

Frederick & Nelson had their own dark green delivery vans, uniformed young women manning the elevators, a tearoom where my favorite lunch soon became a turkey sandwich on cranberry nutbread, introduced to me by my friend Katie Johnsen. There was a beauty shop, candy counters which sold Frango Mints, a melt in the mouth chocolate, and a monthly change of decor. Surely everything necessary to live “the Good Life”. All this without even mentioning Christmas. The window displays were spectacular, and the inside of the store fulfilled every child’s glowing Christmas fantasy.

Like so many of the fine old stores of the past, Frederick & Nelson has long gone out of business, succeeded by the Bon Marche, Macy’s and more. The fancy accoutrements have disappeared, supplanted by acres of clothing rounders and disinterested salespeople. Macy’s however, now sells Frango Mints which is a tiny touch with the past. Surely there is still something below the bottom line.

ROOM FOR ONE MORE

It’s a fact of Life that whether we’re talking about dogs, children, plants, chocolates, or paintings, we can usually squeeze in just “one more”.

In my case today it’s a little bit more complex. One of our destinations of choice is Costco, our local “big-box” store, which deals in furniture, plants, office equipment, liquor, electronics and TV’s, and oh yes, groceries.

We fill the larder every week or so from the careful list I keep on hand. I am an organized shopper, and on the Costco day, we try to visit Trader Joe’s, Safeway and maybe one more additional store to complete the list.

Costco is quite large, and Dr. Advice gets his exercise by pushing my wheelchair up and down each aisle while I give him orders about what to put in the small basket attached to the store-owned wheelchair with the 14″ x 24″ basket in the front. “Turn left here. No! Not right, the peanut butter is left, and if you push me up that aisle I think the ravioli are in one of those cases.” The basket fills up fast, and things like the peanut butter, eggs, orange juice, large paper napkins, oatmeal, etc. begin filling my lap and snuggling up next to my hips.

By this time, the groceries are piled over my head in front, and I can’t see in front of me. The list has been filled but at this point, I invariably say “We aren’t through yet, there’s room for just one more thing.”

Dr. Advice is very polite, and this wheelchair is very long, so it is hard to judge just who may be coming around the corner, and try not to bump into them. We live in a very ethnically diversified community, composed of many Silicon Valley tech people from other countries, some of whom do not speak English as yet. I am smiling widely to show that we did not mean to hit their basket, and Dr. Advice is apologizing and telling the ladies how nice they look, or admiring the many cute babies and children running loose with them. They are all very understanding and sometimes even help us get a place in the long lines formed at the check stands.

You can build up an appetite shopping like this, so after running my debit card through the machine, I say, “I’m tired, find us a place to sit if you can, and I’ll get in line for a hot dog.” It works for me!

HAVE BIRTHDAY, WILL TRAVEL

Today is my 85th birthday, which is a nice sturdy, confident number don’t you think? Eighty-five has a certain panache to it. You have gone past the years of indecision, people credit you with a certain amount of wisdom whether it’s true or not. You have accumulated a lot of memories, and if you can’t remember them precisely, it doesn’t matter, because no one will ever know anyway because they weren’t there.

You no longer have to worry if you’re hair is ‘just right’, or if you are wearing the ‘right’ shoes. You can authentically be the person you really are. Shopkeepers know you and give you better service than when you were 35 or 50. You are likely one of the oldest people in your family, and if you don’t push your weight around, you collect a lot of respect. All in all, it is a comfortable time of life.

There are three places in the world in which I am most at home and invigorated; Paris,France, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Carmel, California. They are all “painters” cities, and I am quite comfortable in them. I celebrated this year’s birthday twice in Carmel, which is the closest to my home in Fremont. My two daughters wined and dined me, and we spent a fabulous girl’s weekend there, doing all the things girls love to do; shop, shop, shop, and eat!

This weekend Dr. Advice, my dear husband of 66 years, took me down again and we had a delightful and romantic “real” birthday (and repeated most of the fun we had last weekend, but with more art gallery visits and trips to the Carmel Bakery.) We drove around and smelled the pine trees and the ocean, and wondered why we don’t wake up each morning with the same view.

Birthdays are wonderful occasions for celebration. No matter what country you are from, they have a version of the “Happy Birthday” song. It doesn’t matter whose birthday it is, it is an affirmation that we are still here, and no matter where we come from, it’s nice to convey our good wishes to those who have achieved another milestone.

RETAIL THERAPY

I can’t help myself. I am a firm believer in retail therapy. In those long, cold boring days of January, there’s nothing like a “SALE” sign to brighten the spirit. Why do you think they have the half-yearly sales? They want to keep you coming back in February too, but remember, the new stuff won’t come in until March.

My friend, Betty, was a savvy shopper as well, and like all of us, had to occasionally clear out the old to make room for the new. She once called me to come help her decide what to throw out, and since we were the same size, I naturally jumped at the chance. I scored a cute pair of light green sling-back shoes, never worn by her because they hurt her feet. They hurt mine too, but they were so cute I could force myself to wear them. While I was trying to determine what I had in my closet that actually went with them, she knocked on my door and asked for them back. What a disappointment. But next day she came again and thrust them through the door snarling in a disgusted way “Take them!” So I did.

We had a running exchange for several years with boxes of See’s chocolates. When I was a couple of pounds too heavy, I hid mine in the attic. It took a trip to the garage to get the ladder and climb into the hall opening to reach it, so I could stay away until I forgot about it. One day she knocked on my door and handed me a box of See’s with 7 pieces left. I solved her dilemma by dividing the odd piece and we each ate 3 1/2, rather like a modern day Solomon.

We took tap lessons together, and once when my father was visiting we had him check out our new routine, complete with top hats and canes. When we were through tapping our hearts out, I asked him what he thought of it. Without a moment’s hesitation, he declared “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

I miss him and I miss her.

HUNTERS vs. GATHERERS

The Old Arrowmaker, w/c by KSR

Hunting season is practically a religion with some people.  My father was a deer huner.  He tried very hard to convince me that if the herds were not controlled, they would starve to death in winter.  That may be true, but if I were a deer, I’d rather go hungry than to see all those maniacs running through my forest dressed up in their camo and crazy red hats, and waving the latest model rifle my way.  Of course the deer do make a game of it by hiding behind bushes and trees and making the hunter work for every shot.

Hunters spend a lot of time readying themselves for the hunt.  Cave man simply had to pick up his club and grunt goodbye to his wife.  But today’s hunters go into a fervor getting properly outfitted in the attire of the proper hunt.

A number of years ago, two young grandsons retreated to their ancient memory of the Hunter.  Armed with new bows and arrows, camping gear and boys,  we set off for a spot near Lake Almanor in Northern Caifornia to take them on their primeval deer hunting experience.

Dr. Advice and I are not hunters, unless you consider a sale at Nordstrom in my case.  We have done a great deal of scrounging the depths searching for fish, and he did some pheasant and duck hunting in the past, but I don’t think we could be considered part of the Hunter economy.

Day One of the hunt.  With a number of other seasoned hunters readying themselves in the campground, the boys dressed in their new camo clothing, dirtied up their faces, pocketed their compass,and as a final addition, sprayed on  Fox Urine!  (It was described in more colorful language).  It is female fox hormone and smells so bad you will never forget it, but is supposed to attract prey.  However, how fox hormone can attact deer is beyond me, don’t they have their own scent?

We drove them to the dropping off point, and set the pickup time.  Since they had no watch, I gave the youngest one my “Rolex” watch to wear.

We arrived at the appointed time to find both hunters sitting on the side of the road, the youngest one with tears running down his face, saying he had lost my “Rolex”.

I could have let him suffer, but instead I told the truth, that it was a phony his Dad had given me anyway.  I told them the good thing was that some hunter was going to find it and think he had found the real McCoy, saying to his wife “Honey I didn’t get a deer, but I found a real Rolex!”

As a dyed- in- the- wool Gatherer, I fed them large plates of “Hamburger Helper” and told them to wash their faces.