The Affordability Crisis Meets the Bitter Sweet Symphony

I was a Florida resident for just 18 days before I was rushed to the ER with septicemia. I am the family cook and grocery shopper. I barely had a chance to do either before my system shut down and I spent four weeks at AdventHealth Daytona. I did shop once at Publix in Ormond-by-the-Sea but mainly, during the turmoil of moving cross-country, we had a lot of food delivered. My wife fended for herself during my hospitalization with the help of family and friends. I awoke from a medically-induced coma after five days and was put on a restrictive diet due to the after-effects of sepsis and my chronic cardiac condition. My orders to the hospital cafeteria hotline were filled with “you can’t have that” and “no.” 

The food I did get was tasteless mainly because it was without taste and the meds I was taking robbed me of my taste buds. I know this because once I could order a hamburger, I did. “Your brother and I had them for lunch and they were tasty.” I tried it. Tasted like cardboard. I hadn’t eaten any cardboard in a long time but that was what the food tasted like had I sampled cardboard in the past. Only once did I cheat. My sister-in-law brought me dumplings from the favorite bistro and I got a shot of salt and Asian spices. Yum. But I was caught cheating and nurses read me the riot act.

I started dreaming about Publix. You know that TV ad where a beautiful young woman flies across the store on a grocery cart triggering the lights in the frozen food section while “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve swells? (you can see the long version on YouTube). I didn’t have that dream. My subconscious put me in my bed which was transformed into a car and I drove to every Publix in town which are legion. I told that dream to the morning’s first wave of med staff and they thought it was funny. A nurse looked up my diet. “I’d dream about Publix too if I had to eat hospital cardboard.” She didn’t say that part about cardboard but she appreciated my dreams.

After my October 4 release, I received daily in-home care for more than a month. Nurses tracked my ingoing and outgoing. PT helped me exercise. I ate simple meals , shopping done by my wife Chris. She can shop and cook. As for shopping, where I enter the store door, I hear a symphony playing. But Chris is assaulted by the sights and sounds I so enjoy. She has a solid case of ADHD and she limits herself to a few items and is out ASAP. Her cooking skills are limited due to nobody, not her mother or sister or teachers, had the patience to teach a left-handed hyper-kid how to put a meal together. I was the oldest of nine and often cooked for my siblings. I cooked when I was a college student and served food at various fast-food joints. Now I cook for my family. Chris, bless her, likes to clean. We’ve been married now for 43 years.

This brings me to the issue of affordability. Three weeks ago, I shopped at Publix with my adult son who is living with us. He has ADHD but it is a different strain from his mother’s. He is an amazing shopper. He can look at my handwritten grocery list, disappear into the aisles, and return with our heavier and bulkier items such as toilet paper, multi-packs of Kleenex, Diet Coke twelve-packs, kitty litter, laundry detergent. I will be puttering around the store in my e-scooter with a few BOGO items, a rotisserie chicken, a packet of deli chicken slices. “What else?” Kevin says.

This leads to a quandary. I don’t mind spending two hours in a grocery store. Kevin thinks a half-hour is way too long. This leads to a question: Should I have Chris drop me off and return when summoned later in the day? Or should I snag Kevin and go team-shopping?

Publix is like Disney World to me, a carnival of foodstuffs. I’m in those TV ads. At least I was until last month when the shopping bill went over five hundred dollars. That’s 10 days of food for three, sometimes four (daughter Annie drops in for an occasional meal). I have never spent that much on one grocery trip. There were many times in my life when I clipped coupons to afford the basics at Albertson's or Safeway for a family of four. I joined shoppers who clicked on their coupons and had the store computer ring up the savings. I would get to the receipt’s final line and boast, “I saved 75 dollars." "I saved 101 dollars.”

I save money at Publix with the BOGO items. Sometimes I get BOGO items just to get BOGO items which will add to the savings line.

Ormond Beach old-timers offer advice. Shop at Wal-Mart. Yes, I know, but it’s Wal-Mart and the Walton family supports Trump and right-wing kooks and yes, I know that one of the sisters has opened an incredible art museum. My sister Mo is a CostCo fan. She talks up the place all the time even though her three children have flown the nest and she shops for just two. She is the only person I know with a CostCo puzzle. She brought it to me in the hospital. It has a million pieces and I barely completed the CostCo hot-dog stand before I gave up. Mo and her husband Ralph took me for an initial foray into CostCo Daytona. The front-of-store display was a massive 100-inch television for an incredible price. I later saw a young man pushing one in a cart across the parking lot. I was entranced by the bakery section. They make their own bagels! Multi-packs of cookies still warm from the oven! Pies the size of 1955 Buick hubcaps (remember them?)! I signed up right away and got a 20 dollar discount on the joining fee. I could go out there right now and pay one dollar and 50 cents for a gourmet hot dog with all the fixins and a soda.

We conducted our Thanksgiving shopping at Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart. I brought Kevin with me as a defense mechanism to thwart the pre-holiday crowds and the sheer size of the place. It wasn’t glorious. I saw no pretty young women soaring on winged carts sailing through the frozen food aisle to “Bittersweet Symphony’s” opening violins. I did see a pair of youngsters shouting “Marco” while their mom yelled at them and then came the distant response of “Polo!” I asked Kevin if that was “a thing” and he replied “Sure.” We bought Great Value products (breakfast bars, pasta, ice cream) and spent a tad over four hundred dollars and I was tempted to remove enough items to go into 300-something but did not. The checker had already yelled “This register is closed” at the poor people behind me. I kept out my receipt as we made it out as that is demanded at Wal-Mart, checking the receipt against the items in your cart. Can’t be too careful during this “fake affordability” crisis.

Cue “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” the Publix ad not the original video which is kind of creepy. The song’s opening lines: “ ‘Cause it’s a bitter sweet symphony, this life/Trying to make ends meet/You’re a slave to money, then you die.”

Me and MyAmigo

We cruise through the Cheyenne grocery store like angels on the wing. We ride MyAmigo scooters, tidy charged-up EVs that transports you through the valley of soft drinks and into the foothills of baking supplies and to the mountaintop of the candies you crave but say you’re buying for the grandkids who never visit. We greet other grayhairs as we pass, josh about drag racing down the aisle at 3.521 mph. I round a corner and encounter Floyd Lopez in his own MyAmigo and we adjourn to Starbuck’s for coffee and talk about Spanish declensions. I insist it’s MiAmigo and he agrees but argues that my idea will make no sense to the majority of Anglo geezers like me. He says that “MyAmigo” is the perfect Spanglish term. “Pancho used it all the time on The Cisco Kid.”

Caffeinated and informed, we return to our respective routes. We try to avoid returning to the other end of the store for items left off the list somehow. That drops the MyAmigo charge to dangerous levels, causes us to seek out a staffer to transfer us and the groceries to a fully-charged EV if one is available and not in the hands of another retiree who breezes around the store as if there was no tomorrow as there may not be. Most shoppers avoid eye contact. What we need is on top shelves. Elders who walk upright ask if they can help. Young couples too, guys in middle age who just got off work and we remind them of their parents tooling around a store in Case Grande or Fort Myers.

Check-out is odd. Cashiers are nice but young ones especially try not to look at you, as if grayness is catching. They hope you will not pay in bills and small change, or labor over a check, or redeem too many coupons clipped out of the Wednesday print ads. They move you right along as they don’t want any repeats of the old lady who yelled about how the leaking deli chicken got all over the muffins. The baggers ask to help you out but you lack any small bills and the kids won’t usually take tips but you never know. You cheat a bit by scooting outside into the lot even though the cart’s label reads “indoor use only.” Some people stop to help as you load groceries into the trunk. Some days you need it. The snow comes down, bitter winds blow. Once I forgot my gloves and it took too long to unload; spent 15 minutes in front of the car’s heater to defrost the claws of my fingers.

I drive home through the blowing snow. My son unloads my haul at home. It's done.