Panic Buying at Our Vons

Our Vons is on the way home from the Park ‘N’ Ride, so I often stop there to get a bottle of Cabernet, or a bottle of Korbel, or a 12-pack of PBR, or a steak, or some chicken, or some DayQuil and tissues, or a birthday card, or a Mega Millions ticket, or “healthy snacks” for tomorrow’s staff meeting  ‘cause everyone is on their beginning-of-the-year diets, depending on how I’m feeling, and it’s usually the same clerks and managers who have been there most of the 29 years I have been going there, but tonight it was different.

Our Vons is an anachronism, a smallish supermarket by today’s standards tucked in the center of the only retail center of a residential enclave, accessible to the outside world only through one of four canyon roads, or from either offramp from I-10 across from the Forest Lawn.  Our residential enclave has around 3,000 people, a country club and a fire station, that retail mall that couldn’t even support a Subway sandwich shop, a dentist, a smoke shop, a Montessori school, an ATM, a real estate office, a nail salon, and a copy and print center.

One time at Our Vons, Lori, the checkout lady, saw I was buying chorizo and onions, and she recited her abuelá’s recipe for chorizo and eggs and I tried it and it was to die for. (The secret is adding torn up corn tortilla to soak up the grease before adding the eggs.)

Another time I was struck by how different our mustard shelves looked from other stores. Because we had 37 different varieties of mustard, with no more than 6 jars of each, somewhere in the back of my brain one of those MBA classes whispered “carrying costs be damned!”

Sometimes in the morning if there’s a slowdown around the freeway interchange southeast of us, we get “traffic” taking a detour, and by traffic I mean having to wait for 7 or 8 cars to go by before jaywalking from the Park’N’Ride to the Commuter Express stop.  There are horse trails alongside the road between the Park’N’Ride and Our Vons, but there are never any horses.

And if there are more than 2 people in line at Daily Donuts in the morning, I can walk next door to Our Vons and pick up a pan de dulce for the bus ride in for under a buck, and we don’t need no QuickChek lane on account of there is never a line.

Which made tonight odd.

After a night of the President “Addressing the Nation,” and after a night of talking heads arguing about how badly he sucked at addressing the nation, and after a day of one professional sports league after another suspending seasons and canceling playoffs on account of the current crisis about which he had addressed the nation,  and after a day of ever gloomier stock market numbers responding to his address to the nation, and after short notice urgent meetings at work titled “Pandemic Prep,” and finally after it all to find out that not only is Disneyland closing but even Tom Hanks and Rita have tested positive, I received a text on the bus: “Please pick up green beans.”

“How many?” I thought.

“Two,”  I answered myself.

“They only sell them by the can,” that  other person inside me answered with a wink.

But that joke doesn’t work because it’s only marginally true at its core, ‘cause Our Vons will sell you two fresh green beans at a time, unlike that rude man in the Farmer’s Market in Bologna in 1980 who couldn’t believe I wanted only two of his tomatoes and wouldn’t sell me less than “due kilo.”

As I rose from retrieving the last remaining shopping basket, I muttered quietly, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!”

4 checkout lanes open! 10 guests in line at each register! Where (TF) did all these people come from?

I didn’t recognize any of them. I didn’t recognize any of the clerks.

But the Lotto machine was where it always is, so…

The canned vegetable aisle was fairly well-stocked, but the dried pasta aisle was looking ragged. The shelves on the toilet paper aisle were bare, and bottled water was almost as sparse.

And people think things will be bad under Democratic Socialists!

I snagged a corned beef brisket, although there were plenty left, because last year I shopped too late.

The line wasn’t bad – took only 15 minutes.

One louder man in line #1 offered a teenager in line #4 “$50 a package” for the two packages of toilet paper in his cart, and the teenager briefly considered the offer until louder man said, “Wait, are they two-ply?” and then we all chuckled.

In my line, a man and his daughter took turns testing the red umbrella they were buying from the #8 spot in line, behind a lady with a full cart and a friend who kept bringing more stuff, who was behind another man buying a single greeting card, who was behind another full cart lady.

A woman in the next line was telling her line mate that she hoped to get back into graphic design because the wedding planner business was tanking because so many couples were cancelling or postponing weddings on account of the “social distance” thing.

My cellphone buzzed with a text from my hairstylist assuring me he was still cutting hair Saturday, despite the “social distance” thing.

And people think things will be bad under Democratic Socialists!

The full-cart lady in front let the one-greeting-card guy go in front of her when it was her turn.

Umbrella father and daughter waited behind their full cart lady.

“How long has it been like this?” I asked the Checker when it was my turn.

“Since yesterday.”

“I came in last night and it wasn’t like this.”

“What time did you come in?”

“Same time, right after work.  I bought toilet paper last night.”

“You’re lucky,” she said. “Are you playing Monopoly?”