Disappointing food

The parking lot of the grocery store in Slingerlands NY where I spend twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year was this Saturday afternoon overcrowded with cars. Finding a spot was akin to musical chairs, around and around in circles until an empty spot opened up and there was a sudden rush of vehicles to claim it and it quickly closed. Inside, under yellow lights and high ceilings where a black bird or two was trapped and flying madly, the air was stale with men pushing carts, awkwardly examining bags of carrots and cases piled with containers of onion dip balanced on top of each other. In front of the seafood counter, packages-of-six giant portabello mushrooms stuffed with crabmeat were selling for $4.99. A floating island was backed up with shopping carts as crammed as the parking lot, as fingers pawed plastic-wrapped chicken wings and pork tenders, marinated and ready-to-be-nuked. There were little girls in dresses the colors of football teams holding on to metal wires of their father’s carts. The aisles were joyless as undecided shoppers glommed up the passageways, staring at rows of various crisps of cheese doodles and salted nuts. I usually run into someone I used to know, a former customer with a worried life story, an aging parent of one of my boys’ high school friends, a pretty stranger with ash-blonde hair whom I recognize from other shopping trips. But today’s group were a darkly alien group of locals who looked vaguely dangerous, ready to turn against you if your shopping cart tapped against theirs. In this small town marketplace, America was getting ready for a party by buying pounds and pounds of cocktail franks and cases of light beer and wine-soaked cheese and Triscuits and trays of bologna and pepperoni and ham and yes even crudités. Getting ready to listen to Renee Fleming sing the Star Spangled Banner, to stand around with distant friends and friends of friends and whomever they could agree to invite over or whomever would agree to come over, to eat disappointing food and watch 3 hours of football that at halftime would feel like the end of the world had arrived. I walked down the empty pet food aisle for some air, but my pretty stranger was nowhere to be seen, smart girl.