Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

I love the occasional trip to the grocery store. Most of the time I try to make a list, but there are those rare occasions when I go with only one or two things in mind, and that is exactly what happened over the weekend.

I had eaten the last two slices of bread and the mustard bottle had long given up even attempting to make that sound that makes the kids giggle, so I loaded up the truck and headed into Earlham to make a stop at the store for bread and mustard.

My first mistake may have been in thinking I needed a cart for my two items. Have I grown so old and lazy that it now requires a cart for a couple of items? Oh, here is the mustard, and I should get some butter while I’m here..sweet corn? Really? They have sweet corn? This is Iowa, and it’s corn! In the cart you go!

Hot Dogs for 99 cents? Who doesn’t need at least three or four packages of hot dogs? Maybe they weren’t 99 cents, but they were a bargain none the less! Brats sound good to me too and I don’t really feel like having a drawer full of lonely hot dogs in the fridge so I should include a package of brats too.

Oh shoot, now I need brat buns, but since they would be with the bread then it’s not like I’m going out of my way to get them. In the cart they go too, along with a box of crackers, a couple boxes of pop tarts and …wait a minute! Snicker ice cream bars? Now how did they end up in the cart when I wasn’t looking?

There comes a point in every trip to the store where I stop and think to myself…do I have the money to pay for this? I should stop and go to the check out, but be sure to avert my eyes from the goodie table on the way so nothing else ends up jumping into my cart.

At the check out, (which I should note was handled with the speed and efficency of a NASCAR pit stop), I looked over and noticed a dented can of Manwhich! Dented cans are a poor guys best friend! I paid the bill and thought for sure I had everything I would need for the week, and I headed out to load my goodies into the truck.

It never fails, if I don’t make a list I forget something. This day wasn’t any different, and I turned back around and headed back into the store for Sauerkraut. How I ever thought of buying brats and not buying kraut was beyond me.

As I carried my groceries into the house and started putting them away, it made me think a little bit about how even mundane chores like going to the store can be fun in a way, mostly because one never really gets the one or two things they went to the store for. Life is like that sometimes. We think we’re only going to get one or two things and the next thing we know we are sitting on the porch eating an ice cream bar and drinking a little tiny can of Coca-Cola and wondering what to make for supper and swearing that there isn’t a thing in the house to make.

See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.