My wife had a small grocery list of a few things we forgot last week. So I accompanied her to our local Texas H.E.B. superstore here in Granbury, Texas, the “Best Historic Small Town” in the United States for the third straight year. Hell yeah! We bad-ass.
1883 filmed here for a week, and then around the countryside along the beautiful Brazos River and close to my house at the base of Comanche Peak. I could hear the gunfire and Indians whooping it up from my patio. I will never forgive Taylor Sheridan for killing off Elsa and Shea. Who does that kind of shit? I may never recover or be the same.
The shopping excursion was fruitful. Twenty-minuets of checking the list and dropping items into our “small basket.” The prices were up from last week, no doubt because of the cost of diesel fuel. I notice a few older folks buying dog food and powdered milk. Tears ran down their cheeks as they passed up the favorite foods and the Shiner beer. A young woman dressed in workout clothes looking like a Kardashian breezed by with a cart full of expensive meats and a case or two of wine. She paused to take a selfie in front of the flower aisle.
We arrive at the checkout. I’m thinking the few items in the basket might add up to 30 bucks, maybe a few more. Nothing special, just some veggies, milk, bread, a piece of meat.
Our effervescent checker scans everything with a smile. She is a teenager in high school with no real grasp of the reality of our world. She works and makes $15.00 bucks an hour. Good for her; at least she is working instead of mooching and bitching. I watch the screen, blah..blah…blah… it all adds up. Total bill; $ 74.00. The booty fills two cloth bags. I ask her to please check again. She does. The same amount flashes on the screen.
My wife says this is a good deal. I think we are now living in the Twilight Zone. Thirty minutes earlier, I paid $ 4.09. ( Beach Boy gas ) for regular fuel, and now this. I know the poor folks in Ukraine have it worse than we can ever imagine, but shit-fire folks. Did we move into an alternate universe when I was sleeping? I could be experiencing a continuing 1960s L.S.D. Flashback.
A year ago, before the “thing from the swamp” was sworn in, a large basket full of groceries could be had for $125 smackers.
The hunched-over old lady behind us is digging through her small change purse, hoping she has enough to cover the few items she has purchased.
What went wrong?
Notes From The Cactus Patch 