Grocery War

Kellers was the neighborhood grocery store here in the part of Cincinnati known as Clifton. This is a small area near a university and a two-year college. It’s a mix of young and old, students, professors, professionals, non-professionals. The business district is likewise a patchwork quilt of restaurants, bars, small stores, a tiny corner library and post office.

Kellers was the anchor and heart and soul of this place. It lasted over seventy years and was a small grocery store that tried to cater to the changing tastes of the locals, by upping the supplies of healthier foods for instance. It was a place to run into those you really want and possibly don’t want to see. 

The floor was well worn. The ceiling leaked on occasion. The refrigerated cases sometimes went on the fritz. But you could circle through there and usually find what you need and be on your way. Unlike the mega-stores that seem to be getting ever larger, Kellers was human-scaled.

I often walked there. Up a good-sized hill. It was great exercise.

Suddenly in January the state tax people showed up and shut the place down. It seemed the owners ( one the grandson of the founder) owed nearly 200 thousand dollars in property and state taxes. Lots of people rallied to their defense. I attended a meeting where we signed petitions, listened to speeches, felt drawn to a noble cause: getting Kellers re-opened.

A friend of a friend warned me that there was more to the story. The owners weren’t telling the whole tale. After a delegation went to the statehouse to appeal to the governor, after bank accounts were set up for donations, after weeks turned into several months - we found out that, indeed, darker deeds had occurred. Employee social security and medical deductions had been used elsewhere. Other things beyond my knowledge went on. It was a mess.

Then two owners of three area grocery stores bought the place. They promised to listen to the locals about what kind of store they wanted. They said the wine section would be enlarged (yes!). They plan to remodel the place with new roof, floors and refrigerated cases.

It is good news for all of us in Clifton. The other businesses have suffered in sales as well. We are all happy that a grocery store will remain in this spot.

But I will miss the old, familiar, ragged place nevertheless.

SPRING SUNDAY

Here in the Middle of the World the weather is unpredictable - not that this isn’t the case in most places. Mostly we have four months of Winter and four months of Summer, a month each of Spring and Fall....and two months of whatever.

Yesterday it was dark and raining and quite chilly. Today the sky has cleared and it is comfortably warm and sunny and breezy. So I decided to get off my ass and finally go for a walk, which I have not done in weeks. I immediately come upon a stranger and her young son canvassing for a petition to keep the nearby college students from parking all over the place. Her young son’s name is Gustav. He’s happy to be helping mom, blond hair and missing front tooth and all.

People on bicycles cruise by and I check out their outfits. Why the logos and uniforms?
Across the street children are goofing around on playground equipment and here comes an ice cream truck, preceded by the usual ringing musical sounds. These days, my inner mind wonders about those trucks. Some of them are a bit ragged and creepy.

The wild cherry in front of my apartment building seems to be bursting outwards like a fireworks explosion.

Flowers abound and mulch and extremely green grass. All of that yard work. I owned my own house once, when my daughter was in elementary school. I did most of the yard work. But my neighbor, Bill, was fanatical about his yard and it always appeared immaculate, as if maintained by a nursery. Mine by comparison was rough, somewhat unkempt and betraying a limited amount of interest by the homeowners. Still, one year Bill bought an exotic tree for the space near his front door and he offered to give me the dogwood that lived there. With his help we managed to free it from the earth (it must have been ten feet tall) and get it transplanted into a cozy nook near my front door. We had a drought that summer and every expert I spoke to told me the poor dogwood was doomed to die. I watered it religiously and tended to it like a second child and the sweet thing survived beautifully. It still lives on in that same spot tended, hopefully, by the present owners.

Jan & Joe

Jan:  J. Crew put out a catalogue and there’s a photo of the       Creative Director with her five-year old son and his toenails have been painted pink and there's this bottle of pink nail polish front and center and all the major media celebs are out there making a big deal of this. People are actually saying that this is some kind of transgender propaganda.

Joe:  Huh? Are you serious?

Jan:  Yeah. People are making a big deal out of this. What the hell is wrong with these folks?!  I mean, it’s a friggin’ lark....it’s fun....a mother having a loving time with her sun. Jesus!

Joe:  Well, it is pink.

Jan:  What?!! Are you gonna say that this is emasculating this kid....are you going to jump on this bandwagon?

Joe:  Uh, no.

Jan:  Our society is self-analyzing itself to death!

Joe:  Hey, the news shows have to fill air time.

Jan:  Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be so damned insipid.

Joe:  Chill out. Let’s go for a walk.

Jan:  God help us.

CAR

My friend Guy bought a large building not too long ago in downtown Cincinnati. It’s actually three buildings put together. The oldest part once housed a tannery - in the 19th century. The part he hired me to work on is a 1940’s era office space.

In between these two areas is a gigantic garage where he works on mostly older European autos. That is his passion as well as his business.

One of the cars that inhabits this place is 1960-something Volvo sports sedan that is identical to the one driven by Roger Moore in the old British TV series The Saint. I always loved that car - as well as that show - when I first watched that series as a kid. Upon my first entrance into this magical world of Guy’s, I immediately spotted this amazing vehicle, beautiful in spite of being in the throes of restoration.

Guy knows his stuff and speaks eloquently and knowledgeably about the extraordinary cars he works on. His enthusiasm is infectious. I get into it, despite how much I tire of driving. But certain cars are much more than just autos...they are mechanized experiences on wheels.

I’ve been working there sporadically; when I am able. The other day I walked in and there, proudly ensconced at the entrance to the garage, was a new and very special automobile: a white Porsche Carrera, vintage 1987, with something like 76,000 miles on it. This thing simply held the ground and radiated importance and style and grace and speed and prowess. It looked brand new. The interior was red leather - in perfect condition. A gorgeous creation.

I felt lucky to be part of its life.

Jake to Doctor Copeland

“We live in the richest country in the world. There’s plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want. And in addition to this our country was founded on what should have been a great, true principle - the freedom, equality, and rights of each individual. Huh! And what has come of that start? There are corporations worth billions of dollars - and hundreds of thousands of people who don’t get to eat. And here in these thirteen states the exploitation of human beings is so that - that it’s a thing you got to take in with your own eyes. In my life I seen things that would make a man crazy. At least one third of all Southerners live and die no better off than the lowest peasant in any European Fascist state. The average wage of a worker on a tenant farm is only seventy-three dollars per person. The wages of sharecroppers run from thirty-five to ninety dollars per person. And thirty-five dollars a year means just about ten cents for a full day’s  work. Everywhere there’s pellagra and hookworm and amaemia. And just plain, pure starvation. But!’ Jake rubbed his lips with the knuckles of his dirty fist. Sweat stood out on his forehead. ‘But!’ he repeated. ‘Those are only the evils you can see and touch. The other things are worse. I’m talking about the way that the truth has been hidden from the people. The things they have been told so they can’t see the truth. The poisonous lies. So they aren’t allowed to know.”

- from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. 1940

SPRING RAIN

I’m so sick of news from the Middle East. 

Where are Americans in the news? Where are the statistics that show the truly unfathomable and ever-expanding inequity between rich and poor here? They fly in and out of the news like pigeons. War and war and war and bombs and death...well, that is the always present flock of pigeons massing around the structures of our empire.

Why the war? Sometimes it’s necessary. We know that. But mostly it seems to be the by-product of men who are jealous, who hate, who are greedy, who are insane, who enjoy it, who have nothing else that excites them.

The weapons industry is like the little hummingbird in the big media world. It flits in and out of view so quickly that we scarcely notice a thing. 

Nary a word seeps out about the financial ties, the profits, the dark side of this industry. America provides nearly half of the world’s armaments.

What if the major media took just one week and spent as much time profiling the arms industry as they do the wars in the Middle East?

War is profitable.

I’m sick of the endless warfare. Most people are. The revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere are exciting and inspiring. Things happen slowly.

But mostly we humans stay very much the same as we have always been.

I was once waiting in my mother’s car while she ran something into my grandma’s house. I pushed in the cigarette lighter. When it popped out I just had to see how hot that red coil was. I was maybe seven or eight years old.

I touched it and of course the skin at the tip of my index finger sizzled and burned. Eventually it turned brown-black-gray. My mom came back to the car and I pretended as it nothing had happened.

We humans have finally reached the point where we are altering the climate of this gorgeous and amazing planet. And yet many selfish dimwits continue to fight for the right to do further damage. I, too, was a dimwit when I inserted my finger in the lighter.

The winds have been strong - over forty miles per hour yesterday. And today the darkness and lightning and thunder and rain showers have descended. 

The world looks greener than ever and the water and the swishing sounds and the birds and the Earth still breathe and move and grow.

I smile and give thanks to another Spring rain.