The other week I decided I needed to run to the store for some things, it was pretty late at night already. On my way there I felt a spontaneous urge to go a different way than habit would have taken me, and on that unusual route, as I laid the route spontaneously, I came across a barricade where a bridge was being replaced, which threw me off entirely. I wound up arriving further along the main thoroughfare than I usually drove, emerging closer to another grocery store than the one I usually shopped.
I only needed a few things, so I parked.
My parents used to take us here, a long time ago. It must be 20 years at least since then. I’m surprised to find it looking much the same. The parking lot is quiet and still, although there are a few cars parked, and the stores lights are on. As I approach the field of view of the door sensor I can hear a familiar hum of some fans before entering the vestibule and finding things almost exactly as I remembered.
I passed by a pair of employees at the overseeing station of the self check outs, feeling a sense of uncanny recognition for the quotidian space. The strange thing was that obviously the stuff on the shelves was all fresh and contemporary, what I’m saying maybe is most obvious in the produce; despite the coolers staying anchored in place in the same way as 20 years ago, the fruits and vegetables had been changed out on a short cycle the entire time. This strange fusion is what greeted me at first subtly as I entered the empty store- that it is just how I remember as I felt at the time simply in reality, not “in the year 2000”.
Rounding the rear corner of the produce I scanned the expanse of fluorescent lights arrayed acorss the cieling framework. I wonder if any of the bulbs from when I was here last are still in place, lit or not. There is certainly a mixture.
I come to one part of the store where they’ve decorated a little more than the rest, and my memory lights up in this really bizarre way. The aisles and the shelves are color coordinated, with striped linoleum and faded photo blow ups over the shelves. Pictures of grain cereals and nuts spread out together, of fruit salad. The whole double aisle plaza is currently the “health & wellbeing” section, but I eventually place it as the former magazine aisle, one of my favorite places a quarter century earlier.
Back then the color scheme and extended shelf paneling gave the area the feeling almost of being in a bookstore, or some kind of newstand. A physical embodiment of current events in a way we dont really have in the same way in the age of the internet. I remember staying in this well delineated area browsing different topics of interests that covered a surprisingly rich gamut while my parents shopped.
I go and look for the where they’ve moved the magazine section. I end up finding a section with kitchen supplies, notebooks and office supplies, all of which seemed like they were original with the store, none of the brands seemed real, there was just something off about them, they seemed old but they were brand new.