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Walmart Shopper: “May God Bless You”
We ran into our local Walmart for a few items. Every aisle I went down, I encountered a younger, overweight fellow riding on one of those driving carts. He seemed to always be in front of me. Sometimes things happen for a reason.
In Walmart, as in every grocery store these days, most including me are fixated on prices. There are things I can’t find anymore like frozen pineapple juice concentrate – or any pineapple juice. Sometimes common items are almost empty or stock is very low. I see carts with not much in them.
Today there was a young guy on the vitamin aisle. He asked the clerk for help. He said he just had leg surgery and was told he needed to boost up his immune system. Don’t we all? He scanned the immune boosters as I scanned his leg. Massive stitches in his calf, swollen foot, he shook a bit as he stood. It looked like a shark or alligator bite or a bad accident. I thought he needed one of those driving carts – how did he even make it into the store?
There were signs of normality on some shelves, like Halloween decorations, but there were few. Only kids seem to be smiling. Lots of worried looks. I thought about the Biden speech the other night – a missed opportunity. No reassurance from the White House on inflation. This was a deliberately chosen “prime time” slot – a chance to deliver something positive. I always only see two aisles with clerks – the rest – some seven or eight – are closed or automated. Jobs that used to be available. 
I sometimes see people limping into grocery stores, or the elderly bagging groceries, and others putting things back on the shelves after seeing the cost. This is America?
I got in one of the two lines with a real person checking groceries. The chubby guy on the riding cart was in front of me. He very carefully picked up his items and set them on the counter. His nails were dirty as was his hair, and he wore some kind of welding t-shirt. Then he ran an assistance card and came up short. He asked the clerk to take some items off. I said no – please – I’ll cover the difference. He glanced over his shoulder and said God bless you – may Jesus bless you! I got choked up.
I needed blessing. I got a reminder why Trump filled a stadium in Wilkes-Barre, PA, the other day and Biden barely filled a high school gym. Those Walmart shoppers – those flyover states – those who can’t buy all their groceries, or home health care nurses like my sister-in-law, who has a gas-savings card to every station just to make ends meet. Biden could have offered some crumbs – anything positive that his administration is doing something constructive, yet he took prime time to beat the common everyday person on the head with that pitiful speech. But he forgot they still have a voice and a vote…..
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I was getting tires the other day and a woman was getting her oil changed and they told her she needed new wipers. I would have said, OK. She said “How much?” It made me sad. She agreed to it, but I was ready to stand up and pay it.
It made me sad.
For decades, heck- for centuries democrats were comfortable with poor whites. That’s how Jackson won and how FDR secured his coalition. Now the democrat party is the party of pajama boy and maleducated whites who worship black radicalism.
I’d sue the driving cart manufacturers for making Me dependent on them.
That’s the American way, isn’t it?
There is no better indicator of the disaster that is today’s America than a trip to a “low cost” store, so one is disabused of the notion that it’s actually low cost. And those who’ve created the problem will never set foot inside.
Could you have done it anyway? I suppose it might have been difficult to arrange.
It’s not much, but when I go to the only grocery-like places in town (Family Dollar, and a semi-local chain kinda similar to 7-11 – they have gas pumps outside too) I usually get back $1 in “cash back” from debit, to leave some change in the “take some, leave some” trays. I ask for 2 quarters, 3 dimes, and 4 nickels. It’s all I can really afford, but some people are “soooo close” when it comes time to check out, and I know it gives some relief at least. Even if it’s just a kid who has $1 for an ice cream treat, but it’s $1.08 with tax.
Neptunus Lex, visiting a Goodwill store in 2006.
Not sure how.
Yes, it’s not like paying for someone’s meal at a sit-down restaurant.
Damn. I still miss Lex.
And God bless you for correcting isle to aisle, that was making me cross-eyed and my vision is already bad enough. :-)
Honey . . your wonderful post has had that effect on me. Yes. God bless you.
Someone on FB posted a white guy who interviewed shoppers coming out of a grocery store down South.
All those who were interviewed said some version of this: “Our local Dem leaders persuaded me that Trump was a misogynist.” (My edit: some used the word “racist.”) “So since I trusted the Dems, I went and voted for Biden. The joke’s on me, isn’t it? Because things were good under Trump. My family was happier, and we weren’t worried about food and gas prices except at the end of the month.”
These were all working class people. They are all a bit wiser now.
But if Biden isn’t the Dim candidate in 2024, and they vote for whoever the next Dimocrat is, they won’t have learned much.
I tell the guy at our 3-Way to keep the change. I have a pile of coins on my dresser, but no desire to spend an entire afternoon rolling them up.
Sure do miss Captain Lex. Gone ten years or so now. Have a Jameson on me next time you’re in Sandy Eggo.
Me too. Have a Guinness on me next time you’re in Sandy Eggo.
No need for rolling with those Coin-X machines or whatever they are. And you get full value if you get certain gift cards etc.
Or you could go to the nearest casino and dump them all into the sorter and then go play the slots! Or……based on the latest news, you could hoard your coins for the coming crash…….
I believe the caution regarding the coming crash is to hoard more-instrinsic-value coins such as “junk” silver. Fiat-money coins wouldn’t be worth any more than fiat-money paper currency.
This might be true – gold and silver coins. My stash of nickels and dimes might get me to a vending machine with a few Twinkies left – they are supposed to last 100 years…….
Maybe earlier ones did, but so much has gone “no preservatives!” lately that I’ve had sealed-in-the-package-and-sometimes-even-refrigerated Twinkies starting to grow blue/green fuzz just a couple days after their “Best By” date.
I’ve put all my money into appropriated copper wire futures.