Happy 14th Birthday Patrick Byxbee
On Grocery Shopping in the USA
On our first full day back in Charles Town I went to my local supermarket to stock up on all the things we needed to get established in the kitchen. It was wonderful to see so much fresh produce, meats, fish and other goodies, all of which we could easily afford. It was a real shock for Cindy since she really hadn’t been shopping in the USA for two years and the size and selections were overwhelming. The place is almost as big as the Bolshoi, and it is one of four such supermarkets in little old Charles Town.
While the joys of shopping were energizing, there were times when I wish everyone had been speaking Russian. Here is a brief excerpt from two women shopping together and speaking loudly. “When Dwayne got out of jail I thought everything was going to be better and then three days later I’m back in the hospital….”. Then there was the middle-aged guy negotiating with his obese, almost teen son, “Now if you stick by the cart and don’t run around the store, I’ll get you a nice ice-cream cone.” I saw the kid three more times, twice running around like a banshee and then sitting with his dad eating an enormous ice cream cone. So much for negotiations!
It is particularly fun to go shopping on a Sunday around 11 am. You get a lovely mix of people dressed up coming back from a religious service as well as those coming in from the hills and hollers for their weekly shopping. Some of them are farmers, judging from their clothes and smells. Others appear to be working in Meth Labs judging from their piercings, tattoos and unfocused eyes. The thing they all have in common is lots and lots of kids. Must be something in the water here but I’ve never seen so many kids all at once except on the playground of an elementary school.
I had forgotten that grocery stores have become almost one-stop shopping centers. We can now get prescriptions filled at the store’s pharmacy, we can get plants, potting soil and pots at their Garden Center, we can exchange propane gas tanks, shop for some items of clothing, go to their bakery for fresh bread and cakes, purchase hardware items, receive money from Western Union from all those idiots who really think I’m a Nigerian Prince, and a host of other cool extras that make it so convenient to shop Charles Town.
On The Pleasures of a Small Town
July seems to be a very busy month here at Casa Embee. Both our cars and our bodies needed to be examined, insurance and registration renewals were necessary, and several packages needed to be boxed, wrapped and shipped to New Zealand, requiring the assistance of the US Post Office.
Getting appointments for our cars to be serviced and inspected required a quick phone call to Sean, our man for all things mechanical. He welcomed us back to Charles Town, told us to bring the cars in at our convenience and that they would each take about an hour to complete all that was needed to keep us legal and safe. We first brought in Cindy’s little bright yellow Aveo, called Tweetie, and an hour later, as promised it was all set to go. Later that day I brought in the Explorer and told them to keep it overnight; otherwise he wanted me to bring it in at eight the next morning and I wasn’t sure we would be awake. I decided to walk home since it would give me a chance to check out what was happening in Charles Town.
The answer to that question was, not much. Several storefront shops are gone and their space empty. There are several more Hispanic bodegas downtown than there were two years ago. These are colorful stores that cater primarily to the Central American workers employed at the big racetrack. Almost all of the jockeys and grooms are from South of the Border and these bodegas are ways to keep them connected to their roots. They also provide a way to send money back to their families in their respective countries.
There are still a number of antique stores on the main drag, which still draw lots of folks on the weekends, especially in the fall. Our primary historical buildings are all looking good and still contain the offices for the city as well as the county government. The new jail has been completed by renovating a marvelous old courthouse, and it looks like the old opera has had a facelift. There are still a few hippy coffee houses, a couple of, shall we say, earthy restaurants and one or two high-end wine shops and restaurants. All in all it was much as we left it and that is wonderful.
Getting our bodies inspected was not something I was looking forward to since I’ve had four doctors in four years and always have to start over with each of them. It appears that the clinic has done much to get their act together, starting with a phone call several days before the physical to take care of the tedious paperwork regarding insurance and medical history. Then a day before our appointments we each received a lovely reminder call. This was all new for this clinic and forebode well for the visit. Sure enough when I arrived at the clinic instead of seeing a mass of sick folks with bad kids making horrible fashion statements, I walked into an empty waiting room. I was immediately greeted, processed and asked to sit down, all in four minutes. I hadn’t reached the chair before a nurse came out and called my name and bam, I was in the bowels of the clinic getting my weight, height and vitals entered into a new iPad-like computer. I was very impressed. My new doctor was a thirty-something male who was pleasant, had read my chart and history and engaged me in conversation for forty-five minutes as he went over my body and brain. What a delightful experience!
Now that I have been pinched, probed and punctured and declared healthy, I could turn my attention to getting the two boxes of stuff sent to New Zealand. Cindy had made the labels and I packed and wrapped the boxes, which contained mail and goodies that Colin and Meagan had ordered and sent to the house after they departed for NZ. They have an embassy mailing address, which means we can send things as though they were going to San Francisco, instead of via International Mail. This makes it much cheaper and a bit easier, although we still have to fill out large customs forms, all of which were dutifully done and attached to the boxes. I drove over to the main post office - yes we have two in Charles Town - and there wasn’t a line of folks waiting which meant I could just plop the boxes on the scale. The clerk took one look at the address and said, “Well it looks like they made it to New Zealand,” this despite the fact that the address was to a PO Box somewhere in the Army Post Office (APO) system. Did I mention we live in a small town? As he was processing the boxes he mentioned that he didn’t think my son and daughter-in-law had filled in change of address forms so he handed me two of those to fill out for them. I would expect nothing more from a town that had the first Rural Route System in the country.
For those who miss updates on Vlad Putin, I thought you might like some exciting news.
