O…M…G… I just got a wonderful whack upside the head!
Did you read yesterday’s FAM post? OINK, we say. Lady! Come down out of your classist eagle’s nest!!!
Okay…. Eventually I quit sitting here going oink oink oink and resigned myself to having to walk up to the (muy hispanico) corner at Main Drag West and Conduit of Blight North.
Trudge through the steamy heat and arrive in a classic corner shopping center. Barge into the El Rancho supermarket. Grab a cart and stroll around. And…
And…gosh.
I like this place!
Damned if it doesn’t have all the kinds of things I like to eat and to cook — bein’ WT myself, I guess, I fit right in. The staff: quiet, nice folks. The other shoppers: damned if they’re not my kinda people!
Suddenly, I’m NOT outside my social class…as is invariably the case at the ritzy AJ’s or the upscale Albertson’s.
I’m walkin’ around in there and thinking, “This ain’t real. IS it?”
But….yeah: it IS real.
For the first time in I don’t know HOW long, I feel…where I belong. And that is not where everyone around me is better than me…
What fun! Omigawd! I felt like I’d gone home!
Gosh. I wish I’d found that place sooner…like when I first moved into the neighborhood, 87 gerjillion years ago.
Classism lives, folks!
Congrats on finding a grocery store you like within walking distance! I sure wish I had one within walking distance. I miss the old mom and pop stores.
Darn right! By the time my parents and I came back to the United States (we had spent 10 years in Saudi Arabia, for my father’s job), the grocery business was being taken over by Corporate America. But there was still one mom-&-pop store up the hill from my great-grandmother’s house in Berkeley. And yes! It was SUCH a pleasant place to shop.
The store up the road from here seems to be more corporate…probably owned by Big Money. But whoever is running it is making it feel like a friendly neighborhood place. First good thing I’ve run into in months!
That’s awesome! And it sounds like this store iscloser and more accessible from your home, which is a nice bonus.
When we moved to our current small town, we quickly discovered the Red & White Supermarket, which I understand is less a chain and more an association of independent grocery stores. I’ve only been in a few times, since my husband does most of our shopping, but it’s owned by a local couple and very much has that mom-and-pop feel. They know their customers and it’s easy to feel at home there.
In our former precincts, we were just down the road from the IGA, similarly an association of independent stores rather than a corporate chain, and similarly welcoming.
Incidentally, both have actual butchers on staff and some of the best meat in their respective areas.