Coffee heat rising

ARE you kidding me???

HOLEE mackerel! How do vendors get away with this stuff?

This morning I went over to Amazon to buy a new bread knife. I dropped  my venerable old serrated bread slicer on the floor, and wouldncha know…it broke apart. And in such a way that I couldn’t glue it back together.

No problem, thought I: that Walmart up in Sunnyslop surely will have them!

Well. No.

Ohhhkayyy… Then of course the Albertson’s, which carries every doodad known to personkind, will have it — just means I have to brave walking through hordes of panhandlers to get in the door.

Pleasantly surprised to find the Albertson’s has hired a security guard to lurk outside the door. Get inside without incident. And…get back outside without incident — and without bread knife.

Whaaa??? A MEGA-supermarket replete with car parts and pots and pans and magazines and books and make-up and allergy pills and whatnot doesn’t carry one single freaking bread knife?

I bought this knife, I think — it was a LONG time ago — at a department store (the Broadway??) or at Williams-Sonoma in Biltmore Fashion Square.

Department stores are pretty much defunct in these parts. The Biltmore is way off my beaten path. The vast shopping mall called Metrocenter, practically within walking distance of my house, closed down completely a few years ago, in the process killing the Broadway, Dillard’s, and every other store that used to hold forth there.

Dayum! This means I’ll have to wait a day or two to get the thing delivered from Amazon and, more to the point, I won’t be able to look at it and handle it before deciding whether to buy it.

Okay, okay…over to Amazon. Thereinat we find this fine device: $169.

A hundred and sixty-nine bucks??? For a bread knife? You’ve gotta be kidding me!!!

Well, you get the kewl Chinese character…I guess that’s worth something.

Wusthof, about the best brand you can buy, has this excellent-looking model, for a mere $150:

Most of my knives are of this ilk, purchased back in the day when I was married to the corporate lawyer and could afford to pay no attention to what things cost. But even then, I can assure you, I would not have paid $150 for a kitchen knife, let alone $169.

Move on: finally I found this thing by Mercer:

That looks a great deal like the deceased, except mine had a nice wooden handle (hold the plastic, please!). Twenty bucks. Actually, less than that: $18.58.

Ohhhkayyy…. That’s more like it. Probably too little to pay, even: it suggests the thing is junk and will last about ten days. Still…it has 301 ratings, adding up to a five-star score. Can’t be all that bad.

Can you imagine? Who pays $150+ for a freaking serrated bread knife?

What a brave new world we live in…