During several recent years, I suspect, many of us had refrained from visiting one of our many grocery outlets, and like me, have recently returned thereto. My “recent” is about three months ago after a two-year hiatus. Other than the prices, which were indeed an eye-opener and revelation, it was a bit strange to traverse the aisles and departments once again. The return renewed my awareness of the reason these stores are called supermarkets. There is everything there to make a house a home.
There are of course those really super places about which I am unfamiliar, given the fact that I am a family of one, but I have visited both the “B” and the “C” once or twice during my adult years. I shall not dwell at length about the bulk offerings of these superstores other than to share how much merchandise a shopper can procure for an equally substantial amount of money. For the sake of honesty and clarity, let us return to our normally sized square-footage building where we retrieve our groceries.
Weis, Giant, Food Lion, Safeway, Acme come to mind as our usual stops for our items of need, not to mention a few other local delights such as Hocker’s or Lloyd’s. Whatever your choice, the dance tends to be the same. Upon entry we secure a wheeled cart into which we shall place our food and other needs for a given period of time. Usually, our trip starts with the produce aisles and then perhaps the meat section where we seek out our favorite butcher. Those two sections alone can absorb a certain amount of time, but do allow us the pleasure of interacting with an employee of our choice. I would be remiss if I did not remind some of you of the time when we visited a butcher store or a vegetable stand. Perhaps some of you still do in the form of the farmers market or a local meat/fish outlet. Whatever our choices, these visits are essential for our survival and well-being.
To return to our supermarket of choice, once we have visited the produce and poultry sections, we find ourselves perusing the 16 to 20 aisles of the store. Most of us do not dwell upon the number of facings in each aisle, but it is fun to consider, let’s say, the cereal aisle. There are three major manufacturers of cereal, each with many names for their cereals, and all proudly displayed on all the shelves on both sides of Aisle 12. Who knew? The 10- and 7-year-olds shopping with you know, and they indeed are offering opinions. Another aisle of note is the washing detergent display, each product promising to do more with less. Even though one product appears to outsell the other 10 or so, the panorama of color certainly holds us in this aisle longer than the frozen foods. Of course, too, it is colder in the aisle featuring that myriad of already prepared products we just love to place in the microwave, or a saucepan, or even on the grill.
Thus far we have covered less than 25% of the average-size store solely devoted to providing us with items for our consumption and domestic use. Strolling up and down the aisles in our respective supermarkets is, yes, time consuming, but kind of exciting and fun. I understand, who has the time, but making grocery shopping a choice rather than a chore adds so much to the experience. The surprises we find in certain aisles alone can add to the experience. “Gee, I never knew they had this here!” And in the basket it goes.
The frequency of this exercise of grocery shopping depends on a variety of circumstances, among which are family size and composition, dinner preparation variety options, frequency of clothes laundering and other household cleaning duties. Despite this chore or errand being basically mundane and perhaps even boring, there is something unique about the click and bing of the scanner, and then the walk to the vehicle located just a little too far away in the parking lot. There is no need to mention the efficiency of the wheels on our particular cart, although such seems to have greatly improved over the years. It’s not like going to the movies, a restaurant, or a doctor’s office where we remain stationary! The trip to and the sojourn in a supermarket can indeed be a many-splendored thing. Enjoy your next visit, and I truly hope you at least partially enjoyed your recent visit for those Thanksgiving goodies, many of which have now been consumed!
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Peter E. Carter is a former public school administrator who has served communities in three states as a principal, and district and county superintendent, for 35-plus years. He is a board member for Delaware Botanic Gardens and Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation, and the author of a dual autobiography, “A Black First…the Blackness Continues.”
