Idle essays

Don’t know if you ever read the obits in your local or national paper. If you don’t, you should. They contain some of the most interesting and significant reporting of our time.

Here’s one that you you need to know about. Every now and again a person comes into this world that all of us should thank. A person whose presence all of us should be grateful for. Col. Mize was one of them.

Know a veteran? Don’t just stand there. Thank him or her for the service.

So I’m cruising home from points north and west, passing through a meth-head–infested slum that borders the canal to the north of the ’hood. My face itches. Again. Couple weeks ago, the dermatologist remarked that this particular kind of annoying itch is often caused by an overgrowth of the yeasts cells that naturally inhabit your skin. Not the kind, he said, that infects women, but just the ordinary everyday flora of the face that for one reason or another get out of hand. An inexpensive solution, he added, is simply to wash your face with Head & Shoulders shampoo, the stuff people use for itchy dandruff, which is caused by the same little critters.

This is not the type of woo-woo eco-friendly organic stuff sold at places like Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. While it may be available at Costco, I feel no inclination to buy a lifetime supply when I have no idea whether it’ll work. Nor have I felt any urge to make a special trip to the Safeway or to the run-down Albertson’s nearby.

Went into a Walgreen’s on the way back into town from Scottsdale last week. But there was only one little guy at the checkout, all alone in the store from what anyone could tell. Ten or twelve people were standing in line; some nut at the front was arguing with the fellow. Give the kid an average of two minutes per customer to move people through: that would be a twenty-minute wait. At an optimistic one minute per customer, we were still looking at 10 minutes of standing in line. No thanks. I put the junk back and left.

Okay. So there’s the backstory.

On the way homeward through the slum, I pass a CVS, a joint I patronize on rare occasions. It’s clean and usually has some version of whatever you need. This day I need a) a L’Oréal mascara wand, the kind with the white undercoat on one end and the black stuff on the other end; b) a bottle of non-aerosol hair spray; and c) the proposed Head & Shoulders.

In the make-up department, they do carry L’Oréal, but they do not carry mascara in that brand. Ohhhkayyy…

Now I search the shampoo aisle for a bottle of Head & Shoulders, and I can’t find it.

Huh? What kind of drugstore doesn’t carry dandruff shampoo?

I find a stockboy and ask him where the Head & Shoulders is to be found. He directs me to — get this! — a locked case!

No joke. The dandruff shampoo is kept under lock and key in this store. When I make some remark like “you have gotta be kidding,” he says, “if we don’t lock it up, people steal it.” It crosses my mind to ask how it’s used in the manufacture of meth. But I restrain myself. Who knows? Maybe the locals drink it.

Welp, there’s no such thing as easy: Head & Shoulders now comes in all sorts of vanity versions, not just the anti-dandruff variety. Most of them are just ordinary shampoo with various kinds of conditioners and BS in them.

Foolishly (what was I thinking?) I say, “Which one has the active ingredient?”

Of course, the kid has no clue. He’s not the brightest rhinestone on the cowboy shirt, I’ll tellya that. He says he doesn’t know, but I could go up to the pharmacist — he kindly offers to accompany me, he being friendly as a puppy — and ask which one has it. I say I have other things to do with my time than wait in line at a pharmacy counter to ask what’s in a bottle of dandruff shampoo, and I suggest that reading the ingredients would be a faster way to figure this out.

This possibility has never occurred to the kid. Now he proposes to hand me one bottle at a time of each of about eight or ten variants, so I can study the contents. One at a time. Lest given free access to the shampoo safe I might make off with one, I suppose. Silently, I wonder how the lad ever learned to tie his shoelaces.

Oh well.

I leave without the mascara and without the shampoo, but do pick up the single bottle of spritz-type hairspray in the store. When I get this stuff home, I discover why it was sitting there, all by its lonesome: the squirt nozzle doesn’t work. Somebody else must have brought it back.

And now I’ll have to drive back up there sometime in the next few days and take it back myself.

I imagine this is what it’s like in any retail store that caters to poor folks. Sucks to be poor, doesn’t it?

So what do you think of the pending takeover of Safeway by the parent company of Albertson’s?

Moi, I think we can expect higher food bills.

Actually, around here the competition among grocery chains is pretty stiff. That has kept Phoenix consumers’ grocery costs pretty much under control. Though our taxes are quite high — almost 10% on all non-grocery items (higher, in some municipalities), and during the Great Recession we had a food tax that was only recently repealed — food prices in general are pretty reasonable compared to the rest of the nation.

That notwithstanding, the locals regard Safeway as a more expensive place to shop than Albertson’s — even though the Albertson’s in my neighborhood jacks ups its prices to take advantage of the un-automobiled poor folks who live in the tenements across the road, and so it’s simply not true that the Safeway five miles from here is higher than the Albertson’s within walking distance. Even if the Safeway were higher, though, it still would be a better place to shop: the parking lot is safer (management keeps the panhandlers off the store’s private property, which you may be sure Albertson’s does not), the meat is 10 times better, produce is infinitely better, and the wine selection is far, far superior.

I expect the Albertson’s management will cheapie down the Safeway where I’ve been shopping — and I don’t mean lowering the prices but lowering quality all across the board. That Safeway now faces competition from a brand-new Sprouts, from a brand-new Whole Foods, and from an established and much-loved Trader Joe’s. The last couple of times I’ve been in the Safeway, it was practically empty.

It’s too bad, because you can’t get all your shopping done at a Sprouts or a Trader’s. There are just some things you can’t buy at those specialty stores — cleaning products that actually work, for example, and your preferred personal products. If you don’t shop at the Safeway, you end up having to go to two or three stores during a shopping trip, a real pain in the tuchus.

What I expect they’ll do is get rid of the wonderful selection of wines in the $8 to $12 range, figuring they can’t compete with Trader Joe’s selection of rotguts. They’ll lower the quality of the meat (which ain’t great but is good enough). They’ll add a lot more gross processed foods, which must be far more profitable to sell than real food. And they’ll limit the selection and reduce the quality of the produce.

Truth to tell, though, I had pretty well stopped going to our Safeway. Costco has better meats for the same price. AJ’s (local gourmet grocer) has far better produce for…uhh…well, astronomical prices. Sprouts has comparable produce for less money. Whole Foods has awesome meats and fish for not much all that much more. Trader Joe sells neat things (like the packages of baby artichokes) that you can’t even get at Safeway, and most of its produce is cheaper.

Could be, I suppose, that these old standard stores are turning into dinosaurs. Huh. Wonder if we’re looking at the tyrannosaur eating the brontosaurus?

😀

Friend of mine, a lively lady who happens to be a long-haul trucker, sends this entertaining story of life on the road:

* * *

I used to write letters to people when I was sitting at loading docks. It was not uncommon to be parked for 4 to 6 hours at grocery warehouses, so I had plenty of time.

One letter that I wrote to Bob and Roberta began innocently enough.  My truck was in the shop at a Kenworth dealer in Fort Worth, Texas.  The mechanics told me I could hang out in the truck while they worked on it. This was cool.  I love mechanical stuff, car/truck stuff, and especially mechanics doing manly things in the vicinity of cars and trucks.

I was writing the letter from the bunk and the curtains were open.  Did not want to ruin the view!  I had just placed my pen to paper when the passenger door opened and in popped the handsome face of a greasy mechanic.  In uniform and everything.  Did I mention I love things like that?

The only reason this is noteworthy is that I had not had a date or boyfriend in ages as a result of having sworn off of both.  Unfortunately, my resolve had been slowly wearing down.  A clear indication of this was the giant poster of Green Bay’s golden boy Brett Farve, pre-scandalous behavior, with a milk mustache displayed prominently in my bunk.  I could gaze at it every night before going to bed.  That poster brang me back to life.  Thank you Brett – and USA Today – and the Milk Producers Association.

So here is this hunky mechanic sans wedding ring (I checked) with his torso draped across the passenger seat just a couple of feet from me.  He was fiddling with some wires in the dash.  For some reason my pen would not move.  I am not sure how long I sat there, frozen, unable to break the spell this dude had on me.  But I enjoyed the experience completely.  He apologized for being in the way – are you kidding me?? – and I assured him that it was not a problem.

Only after he exited the cab area of the truck was I coherent enough to begin my missive.  I had recently completed a disastrous run from Wisconsin to Los Angeles (or somewhere out West) and was eager to share it with my bro and his wife.  It ended up a 13-pager.  Don’t remember how long I sat in that shop, but it must have been a while!  After I signed off, I added a title to the first page.  It was called “A Christmas Story”.

Thanks again for the story.  Brings back fond memories for me!

XO,
Connie

PS  The Brett Farve poster was eventually replaced by a calendar of hunky priests given to me by my sister.  She found it in Italy when she was there with the choir.  That was one “attractive” calendar.

Heeee! Who would think a pair of shoes made of rubber, Nylon, and Velcro could be soooo kewl?

Well…they’re probably not. They’re probably kewl only to a certain nerdly type.

Last year I bought my first pair of Teva sandals, hiking/loafing footwear favored by the outdoorsy set. I had resisted for quite a long while, because they came highly recommended by SDXB, with whom, by the time his love affair with the things began, I had become profoundly annoyed. If he liked the damned things, I reasoned in my girlish way, they couldn’t be much.

In spite of myself, last year I tried on a pair and was seduced into buying. And I’ve come to love them.

I wore them almost every day all through the summer (wading through water and mud and gravel and dust and grass and weeds in them) and then with socks against the cold all through the winter. That pair beginning to look a little tired, I decided that before the heat comes in this year, I should buy another pair. Several styles exist; one was much cuter than last summer’s style, and I thought maybe I should try that.

So it was off to Sportsman’s Warehouse, conveniently located next to my second-favorite middle-class Costco store (the Costco nearest me is conveniently located between a desperate slum and a Walmart). Tried on the “cuter” style and found, as I’d found a year or more ago, that it threatens to raise a blister on the tenderist part of the arch. But LO! The model I’ve come to love and worship now comes in…yes! LIPSTICK RED!!!!!

Who could resist?

So I bought a pair of those. If anything, they seem to fit marginally better and feel even more incredibly comfortable than the old black & grey model.

While I was at it, I also picked up a pair of Teva flip-flops (“slides,” the company calls this model). These, I don’t even have to bend down to pull on the feet. They won’t do for those two- and three-mile de-fatting walks around the ’hood, but they’ll be mighty handy around the house and yard. Assuming Pup doesn’t eat them. 😉

Here they are: Nerd High Fashion:

And your favorite fashion footwear is…?