Diane is one of the nicest people I know and yet all I really know about her is that her name is Diane and she has a terrific smile. I know her name because it's on her name-tag and as for the smile, well, she wears that just as visibly. Diane is my cashier at the grocery store that I visit on a daily basis. I guess she's not really "my" cashier because a) that would be creepy and b) I wouldn't know how to go about obtaining a cashier of my own, even if I wanted one. She is, however, my favorite. Like I said, I don't know the woman at all. I have no idea what her favorite movies are, no clue if she's married or has children, and if I had to guess her age, I would aim low. Truth be told, none of this is my business and I plan to keep it that way. I do know she keeps a tidy conveyor belt, bags groceries like a Tetris wizard would and always gives correct change. But it's her genuine smile, one with eyes that crinkle around the edges, that keeps me coming back to Valu-mart again and again. I can buy a packet of processed Carl Buddig deli meat anywhere, but the Dianes of the world are increasingly hard to come by.
The idea of grocer loyalty is not something I came to on my own. Where I grew up there are two grocery stores just off Main Street. Keep in mind that Oxbow has barely a thousand residents, so the fact that we have two grocery stores is a rural badge of honor that gives us all something to brag about. Not only are we superior to the sad saps in Alida, who only have one grocery store, but we must seem like absolute gods to all the suckers in Frobisher, who lost their grocery ages ago and now have to forage for nuts and berries. The two stores are situated directly across the street from one another; IGA on the north side and Co-op on the south. Their adversarial positions, one in plain view of the other, make it impossible to favor one over the other without everyone in town knowing about it. This is the just the sort of grist that keeps the Oxbow gossip mill alive and hours are spent gabbing about such matters at the local not-quite-a-Dairy Queen restaurant.
Business was brisk at both stores when I was growing up. Their parking lots filled to overflowing many times throughout the day, but particularly around 5pm when everyone was just getting off from work. The stores closed at 5:30 in those days, so it was a mad dash from the office to the dairy section in order to successfully check off all the items on any given list. Being a farm kid, my trips to town were carefully planned by my mom because if anything was forgotten, it was a lengthy drive back to the store from our house. For this reason she usually avoided grocery shopping at peak times. This gave her the opportunity to shop at her leisure, without the pressure of having the doors locked and lights extinguished before she even hit the deli department.
We always stopped at the IGA first. Mom would pull up in her van and into the gravel parking lot alongside the building. Mom's van was not one you could miss. Before "mini" became a common prefix to "van," and long before the SUV took over entirely, vans were enormous. Ours was particularly huge and looked more like a motor home than anything else. Outside it had picture windows all around it and a ladder up the back in case anyone wanted to have a rooftop party. Inside, it was practically bigger than my first apartment. By New York City standards, the back had a full sized living room. It had ample closet space, an entertainment system built into the wall and a sofa that, while comfortable, had no seat belts. Were we to be in an accident, no doubt we all would have been killed, but at least we would have gone comfortably. The van also had shag carpeting on the walls and cigarette lighters everywhere you looked. I wonder how many vans went up in smoke before they eliminated this hazard. Nowadays any surviving vans of this sort sputter along in traffic, smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants across the border.
In a big city one could feasibly buy all of their groceries in one store without ruffling any feathers. This may have been possible, even in Oxbow, had my mom not been driving such a conspicuous vehicle that made her look like a member of the A-Team. Instead, we would open the doors, load all of our IGA bags into the rumpus room and drive across the street to the Co-op. Yes, drive. The trip was approximately twenty yards, yet she would cross Prospect Avenue and into the adjacent parking lot. This was less a show of laziness the than it was a proclamation to any onlookers. "Look at me," the van would say. "I am parking over here now because I support both businesses." Heaven forbid mom be accused of making waves on Main. Which, coincidentally, was the name of a bar just around the corner. Perhaps its owners were inspired by her actions.
Truth be told, I preferred the IGA and would have chosen to do all of our shopping there. Half of the store was dedicated to groceries, but it was the other half that piqued my youthful curiosity. There was a little of this and a little of that, all spread out in a fashion that could only be described as willy-nilly. Cable knit sweaters hung on flimsy plastic hangers, dusty jigsaw puzzles were stacked next to crusty bottles of mucilage, and tempera paints teetered dangerously off the shelf they shared with bags of baby bottle nipples. My favorite section had a wall of VHS tapes as far as the eye could see, with classic titles available for rent, such as Clue, Baby Boom and Vasectomy! starring Paul Sorvino. They seemed to have everything, including products that were long discontinued. Once I was outraged that Good Host had changed their granulated iced tea mix to include a hint of lemon. It was disgusting. Just when I had given in to the idea of never drinking Good Host Iced Tea ever again, a care package arrived at my door. Mom had sent me two whole cans of my favored original blend. Once I caught my breath, I called her on the phone.
"Where did you find them?" I shrieked.
"At the IGA," she proudly exclaimed. "Behind the Cheese Whiz. They've got lots back there!"
I was so excited that I encouraged her to buy them all, which she did. For several glorious years thereafter I had a healthy supply of iced tea whenever I came home to visit. Eventually, one scoop at a time, the stockpiled cans of Good Host came to an end and thus closed the doors on a golden era of my life. Which is just as well because, in case you didn't already know, granulated beverages cause kidney stones. Take my word for it.
Not that there was anything wrong with the Co-op. The lights were brighter, the shelves were fully stocked and you could practically eat off the squeaky clean tile floor. They also had a miraculous produce section with crunchy heads of romaine lettuce and assorted exotic fruits. They did not, however, have anything a child might find even remotely interesting. I remember riding in the cart with my brother Curtis and, with nothing else to keep me occupied, I would taunt him endlessly until he got into trouble for hitting me. Mom rarely caught on to this, but I was usually the one that started all of our fights. Still today I hear stories about what a hand-full Curtis was as a child, but it was usually me who nudged him into those angry hands. He would get punished while I got off scott-free, and to this day my childhood reputation remains squeaky clean.
As I got older and did my own shopping, I found myself slightly intimidated by the Co-op. The whole enterprise seemed a little elitist because they would ask for my "Co-op number" every time I checked out. To this day I have no idea what they do with the information gathered from such a survey, but it has a whiff of "big brother is watching" to it that makes me uncomfortable. I picture a scrawny intern at Co-op headquarters, waiting for something juicy to come into the office. "You'll never guess what happened today," he whispers to his co-worker. "Sharon in Oxbow bought another box of chicken fingers."
"Oh my god," she gasps. "I hope you flagged her account."
Not long ago I was passing through Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, and stopped at their Co-op for a bottle of Diet Coke. "Your Co-op number?" the cashier inquired.
"7505," I blurted out. Just like that, the number traveled from my brain to my lips. I had not used that number in at least a decade, yet it came to me without any hesitation. Most of what I learned in high school has long evaporated into thin air, but my Co-op number continues to take up valuable real estate in my head. At first I was pleased that it had come to me so easily, but then I got to wondering just what I could be capable of had I retained more vital knowledge, and my brief moment of pride turned to horror.
Living in a big city means I'm not required to remain faithful to any one grocery store. There is nobody watching to judge my shopping habits, so I take turns with my patronage. I find shopping for groceries boring, so I frequent a store until I memorize exactly where everything is shelved and then I move on to the next. Each store usually takes me a couple of months to master because I can never quite remember where they keep the Shake 'N Bake. I have no idea why, but grocery stores cannot seem to agree where the appropriate place is to keep the Shake 'N Bake. At Sobey's it's next to the salad dressing. At Metro it's by the pasta sauce. And at Loblaws they keep moving it around on me. Last I checked, it was across from the paper towels. Nowhere, however, keeps the Shake 'N Bake where Shake 'N Bake ought to be, which is next to the chicken. If I ever become the manager of a grocery store, my first order of business will be to move the Shake 'N Bake next to the products that are intended to be shaken and baked.
After several years of grocery store hopping, I crossed Metro off my list. Unless I happen to be passing by and am in a bind for sour cream to go with my tacos, I refuse to set foot in there. They have an obnoxious cashier named Ron that sours more than just my cream. He orders people into his line and then proceeds to criticize the way they unload their carts onto his conveyor belt. Once he refused to sell me a box of cookies because the generic brand was on sale and "just as good," he barked. He has a high pitched voice that could penetrate steel and it always sounds like he's on the verge of hocking up a puddle of phlegm. Sometimes after a day of work, I would peek in to see if he was there. If his was the only line open, I would leave immediately and buy whatever it was I needed at the convenience store for twice the price. When I started hearing his voice in my sleep, I decided it was not worth going there ever again, even if it is the closest store to my apartment.
That's when I started doing all of my shopping at Valu-mart and met Diane. She's so kind and pretty that it makes shopping for groceries less a chore and more a life experience. She also reminds me of the sort of cashier I would find at the IGA in Oxbow. She seems to genuinely care that you found whatever it was you were looking for and would never nit-pick at your dinner selections. I don't make a point to go through her line, but knowing she's there is enough to transport me back to the days of my childhood, when grocery shopping was a community experience.
I recently found out that my beloved IGA is going out of business. Come April, there will be nothing more than an abandoned building where many of my childhood memories take place. Perhaps I'm too sentimental, but I was devastated upon hearing this news. While the population of Oxbow is growing at a rapid rate, it appears that more and more people are making the 40 minute drive to the city of Estevan to buy heavily discounted groceries at Wal-mart. When I was younger, a trip to Estevan was so cumbersome that it might as well have been the Oregon Trail. This was especially true in the winter, when the road conditions were unknown to many. Nowadays I see Facebook status updates throughout the months of January and February that declare the roads between Oxbow and Estevan "clear and passable." Or occasionally, "a bit icy around Bienfait, but just slow down and you'll make it." The first Wal-mart casualty in Oxbow was Macleod's, the long standing hardware store at the corner of Peters and Main. Now the IGA is closing and soon Oxbow will be no better than Alida. If people continue to "run into Estevan" for nothing more than a carton of milk, the Co-op will inevitably follow suit and render my hometown as deserted as Frobisher.
Mom's trips across the street from one grocery store to another taught me a lesson that I carry with me to this day. People vote with their money. Which is why I have decided to remain faithful to Valu-mart for the time being. Sure, I live in a big city and my small purchases in five dollar increments will not keep them afloat, but I want to do my part to keep people like Diane employed for as long as possible.
The other day she looked out the window and smiled. "It's such a nice day," she said. And judging from the glint in her eye, I knew she meant it.
"Yes it is," I replied. And I meant that, too.
The idea of grocer loyalty is not something I came to on my own. Where I grew up there are two grocery stores just off Main Street. Keep in mind that Oxbow has barely a thousand residents, so the fact that we have two grocery stores is a rural badge of honor that gives us all something to brag about. Not only are we superior to the sad saps in Alida, who only have one grocery store, but we must seem like absolute gods to all the suckers in Frobisher, who lost their grocery ages ago and now have to forage for nuts and berries. The two stores are situated directly across the street from one another; IGA on the north side and Co-op on the south. Their adversarial positions, one in plain view of the other, make it impossible to favor one over the other without everyone in town knowing about it. This is the just the sort of grist that keeps the Oxbow gossip mill alive and hours are spent gabbing about such matters at the local not-quite-a-Dairy Queen restaurant.
Business was brisk at both stores when I was growing up. Their parking lots filled to overflowing many times throughout the day, but particularly around 5pm when everyone was just getting off from work. The stores closed at 5:30 in those days, so it was a mad dash from the office to the dairy section in order to successfully check off all the items on any given list. Being a farm kid, my trips to town were carefully planned by my mom because if anything was forgotten, it was a lengthy drive back to the store from our house. For this reason she usually avoided grocery shopping at peak times. This gave her the opportunity to shop at her leisure, without the pressure of having the doors locked and lights extinguished before she even hit the deli department.
We always stopped at the IGA first. Mom would pull up in her van and into the gravel parking lot alongside the building. Mom's van was not one you could miss. Before "mini" became a common prefix to "van," and long before the SUV took over entirely, vans were enormous. Ours was particularly huge and looked more like a motor home than anything else. Outside it had picture windows all around it and a ladder up the back in case anyone wanted to have a rooftop party. Inside, it was practically bigger than my first apartment. By New York City standards, the back had a full sized living room. It had ample closet space, an entertainment system built into the wall and a sofa that, while comfortable, had no seat belts. Were we to be in an accident, no doubt we all would have been killed, but at least we would have gone comfortably. The van also had shag carpeting on the walls and cigarette lighters everywhere you looked. I wonder how many vans went up in smoke before they eliminated this hazard. Nowadays any surviving vans of this sort sputter along in traffic, smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants across the border.
In a big city one could feasibly buy all of their groceries in one store without ruffling any feathers. This may have been possible, even in Oxbow, had my mom not been driving such a conspicuous vehicle that made her look like a member of the A-Team. Instead, we would open the doors, load all of our IGA bags into the rumpus room and drive across the street to the Co-op. Yes, drive. The trip was approximately twenty yards, yet she would cross Prospect Avenue and into the adjacent parking lot. This was less a show of laziness the than it was a proclamation to any onlookers. "Look at me," the van would say. "I am parking over here now because I support both businesses." Heaven forbid mom be accused of making waves on Main. Which, coincidentally, was the name of a bar just around the corner. Perhaps its owners were inspired by her actions.
Truth be told, I preferred the IGA and would have chosen to do all of our shopping there. Half of the store was dedicated to groceries, but it was the other half that piqued my youthful curiosity. There was a little of this and a little of that, all spread out in a fashion that could only be described as willy-nilly. Cable knit sweaters hung on flimsy plastic hangers, dusty jigsaw puzzles were stacked next to crusty bottles of mucilage, and tempera paints teetered dangerously off the shelf they shared with bags of baby bottle nipples. My favorite section had a wall of VHS tapes as far as the eye could see, with classic titles available for rent, such as Clue, Baby Boom and Vasectomy! starring Paul Sorvino. They seemed to have everything, including products that were long discontinued. Once I was outraged that Good Host had changed their granulated iced tea mix to include a hint of lemon. It was disgusting. Just when I had given in to the idea of never drinking Good Host Iced Tea ever again, a care package arrived at my door. Mom had sent me two whole cans of my favored original blend. Once I caught my breath, I called her on the phone.
"Where did you find them?" I shrieked.
"At the IGA," she proudly exclaimed. "Behind the Cheese Whiz. They've got lots back there!"
I was so excited that I encouraged her to buy them all, which she did. For several glorious years thereafter I had a healthy supply of iced tea whenever I came home to visit. Eventually, one scoop at a time, the stockpiled cans of Good Host came to an end and thus closed the doors on a golden era of my life. Which is just as well because, in case you didn't already know, granulated beverages cause kidney stones. Take my word for it.
Not that there was anything wrong with the Co-op. The lights were brighter, the shelves were fully stocked and you could practically eat off the squeaky clean tile floor. They also had a miraculous produce section with crunchy heads of romaine lettuce and assorted exotic fruits. They did not, however, have anything a child might find even remotely interesting. I remember riding in the cart with my brother Curtis and, with nothing else to keep me occupied, I would taunt him endlessly until he got into trouble for hitting me. Mom rarely caught on to this, but I was usually the one that started all of our fights. Still today I hear stories about what a hand-full Curtis was as a child, but it was usually me who nudged him into those angry hands. He would get punished while I got off scott-free, and to this day my childhood reputation remains squeaky clean.
As I got older and did my own shopping, I found myself slightly intimidated by the Co-op. The whole enterprise seemed a little elitist because they would ask for my "Co-op number" every time I checked out. To this day I have no idea what they do with the information gathered from such a survey, but it has a whiff of "big brother is watching" to it that makes me uncomfortable. I picture a scrawny intern at Co-op headquarters, waiting for something juicy to come into the office. "You'll never guess what happened today," he whispers to his co-worker. "Sharon in Oxbow bought another box of chicken fingers."
"Oh my god," she gasps. "I hope you flagged her account."
Not long ago I was passing through Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, and stopped at their Co-op for a bottle of Diet Coke. "Your Co-op number?" the cashier inquired.
"7505," I blurted out. Just like that, the number traveled from my brain to my lips. I had not used that number in at least a decade, yet it came to me without any hesitation. Most of what I learned in high school has long evaporated into thin air, but my Co-op number continues to take up valuable real estate in my head. At first I was pleased that it had come to me so easily, but then I got to wondering just what I could be capable of had I retained more vital knowledge, and my brief moment of pride turned to horror.
Living in a big city means I'm not required to remain faithful to any one grocery store. There is nobody watching to judge my shopping habits, so I take turns with my patronage. I find shopping for groceries boring, so I frequent a store until I memorize exactly where everything is shelved and then I move on to the next. Each store usually takes me a couple of months to master because I can never quite remember where they keep the Shake 'N Bake. I have no idea why, but grocery stores cannot seem to agree where the appropriate place is to keep the Shake 'N Bake. At Sobey's it's next to the salad dressing. At Metro it's by the pasta sauce. And at Loblaws they keep moving it around on me. Last I checked, it was across from the paper towels. Nowhere, however, keeps the Shake 'N Bake where Shake 'N Bake ought to be, which is next to the chicken. If I ever become the manager of a grocery store, my first order of business will be to move the Shake 'N Bake next to the products that are intended to be shaken and baked.
After several years of grocery store hopping, I crossed Metro off my list. Unless I happen to be passing by and am in a bind for sour cream to go with my tacos, I refuse to set foot in there. They have an obnoxious cashier named Ron that sours more than just my cream. He orders people into his line and then proceeds to criticize the way they unload their carts onto his conveyor belt. Once he refused to sell me a box of cookies because the generic brand was on sale and "just as good," he barked. He has a high pitched voice that could penetrate steel and it always sounds like he's on the verge of hocking up a puddle of phlegm. Sometimes after a day of work, I would peek in to see if he was there. If his was the only line open, I would leave immediately and buy whatever it was I needed at the convenience store for twice the price. When I started hearing his voice in my sleep, I decided it was not worth going there ever again, even if it is the closest store to my apartment.
That's when I started doing all of my shopping at Valu-mart and met Diane. She's so kind and pretty that it makes shopping for groceries less a chore and more a life experience. She also reminds me of the sort of cashier I would find at the IGA in Oxbow. She seems to genuinely care that you found whatever it was you were looking for and would never nit-pick at your dinner selections. I don't make a point to go through her line, but knowing she's there is enough to transport me back to the days of my childhood, when grocery shopping was a community experience.
I recently found out that my beloved IGA is going out of business. Come April, there will be nothing more than an abandoned building where many of my childhood memories take place. Perhaps I'm too sentimental, but I was devastated upon hearing this news. While the population of Oxbow is growing at a rapid rate, it appears that more and more people are making the 40 minute drive to the city of Estevan to buy heavily discounted groceries at Wal-mart. When I was younger, a trip to Estevan was so cumbersome that it might as well have been the Oregon Trail. This was especially true in the winter, when the road conditions were unknown to many. Nowadays I see Facebook status updates throughout the months of January and February that declare the roads between Oxbow and Estevan "clear and passable." Or occasionally, "a bit icy around Bienfait, but just slow down and you'll make it." The first Wal-mart casualty in Oxbow was Macleod's, the long standing hardware store at the corner of Peters and Main. Now the IGA is closing and soon Oxbow will be no better than Alida. If people continue to "run into Estevan" for nothing more than a carton of milk, the Co-op will inevitably follow suit and render my hometown as deserted as Frobisher.
Mom's trips across the street from one grocery store to another taught me a lesson that I carry with me to this day. People vote with their money. Which is why I have decided to remain faithful to Valu-mart for the time being. Sure, I live in a big city and my small purchases in five dollar increments will not keep them afloat, but I want to do my part to keep people like Diane employed for as long as possible.
The other day she looked out the window and smiled. "It's such a nice day," she said. And judging from the glint in her eye, I knew she meant it.
"Yes it is," I replied. And I meant that, too.
