What is it about the Tummy Temple?

I will confess. I do have a fixation on what some call a ‘super market’ or ‘grocery store’. These are places where co-ops, farmers and producers bring the countries abundance for each of us to choose at our leisure what we will eat for dinner.

A little background on my grandfather was in the food distribution business. Not sure how that started because from what I read my great grandfather, after surrendering at Appomattox, went into the mercantile business before dying from dirty water. This was a time when the family moved from Richmond to Wilmington, NC and cities were forming and people needed a place to get grub. Unfortunately there are no-pass-me-down tales of who, or what, and why but there are references in the family tree that makes me assume he was more than a deacon of the church.

Now I grew up in the land of plenty and remember going to the Safeway and the A&P to gather our fixings.

Yet I also remember the little corner store, ‘Paul T’s’, on my father’s block that had open counters of fresh vegetables and fish on ice and canned goods only to be reached by a ladder pushed on a crushed peanut shell floor. Women would come in and talk and get a few items that they could carry and say, “Put it on my bill” and a note was written on a scrape of paper. If the phone rang to request some items, a young lad would gather them up in brown paper wrapping and deliver them by bike without a dollar changing hands. At the end of the month people settled their bills and everyone was happy.

At the same time, people would wander into the market, maybe open a jar and grab a pickle and then chew the fat with the grocer over the best cut of meat or the catch of the day. The smell of open-air food didn’t matter because someone was always swatting the flies.

A grocery store is a retail store that primarily sells food.

Grocery stores often offer non-perishable food that is packaged in bottles, boxes, and cans; some also have bakeries, butchers, delis, and fresh produce. Large grocery stores that stock significant amounts of non-food products, such as clothing and household items, are called supermarkets. Some large supermarkets also include a pharmacy, and customer service, redemption, and electronics sections.

So I took my experience of a friendly place where people would gather (other than school or church) and found it a relaxing spot to meet neighbors, catch up on gossip, be rewarded with pass-due-date dead animal bargains, get back for Sunday supper while the lard melted in the cast iron skillet.

The grocery business, like every other business, adjusted to the times. Better refrigeration and cooking appliances started filling every home so home-cooked meals went beyond baking bread and shucking peas and frying chickens from the backyard. Instead of thumping your cantaloupe the FDA put a label on it to tell the grocer when to throw it away instead of making the consumer sick. The variety of soups and pasta and cereal and tomatoes went beyond what could be imagined or necessary.

The casual gathering place became a panic to use the latest coupon before expiration and follow the promotional items that weren’t that tasty but everyone else was buying them. Our palettes changed from hours of preparations for a meal to a pop-in-the-microwave. The texture, flavor, and experience of dining turned into television dinners.

The goal was to get the customer in as fast as possible and out the door to restack the shelves for the next one to be presented with the most pleasing and inviting product to increase profit and the major chains gobbled up the mom and pop operations with efficiency and better lighting. Lads in white aprons speeded each customer request quickly and politely while feverishly filling the shelves with the latest version of the same old product.

The checkout counter was probably the evolution to the next century. Instead of a nice lady waiting for you to place your selection on a table (for the grocer had found that having the customer gather the items was a better business model than having to pay staff to gather items for them) and then she would have to punch in the price of each item, for there were no scanners back in the day, while having a conversation with the shopper forming a bond to the store brand. At the end of each run there was a lad in a clean white apron and a youthful smile bagging your items with the value added service of hauling your grub to your automobile’s trunk.

Now there are all these vast warehouses of rows and rows of substance selections. There are still all those garish overhanging signs announcing the bargains of the day but as of yet, no laser lights or explosions or half naked girls beckoning for you to pick up a jar of peaches. While the modernizing of our baskets have gone from wire to plastic to small to scooters, the shopper is still responsible to seek and find what they wish to eat and that is all part of the game. The grocer certainly has information about you. There are cameras everywhere and you even get to swipe a store card to let them know your budget and preferences. If you choose to download the app, there are certainly recommendations for further irresistible purchases.

So here we are with one foot in history and the other in the future. These are the locations of baby diapers, eye shadow, green beans, pills and potions, frozen pizza, canned corn, sliced meat, allspice, cat litter, sliced bread, corn starch, corn flacks and a cornucopia of libations.

Someday when I walk through the electronic opening doors, I will be scanned and in a few moments some sort of computer-generated gizmo will accumulate my order and the bill be placed on my credit card. Someday it may just become such a routine that a drone will deliver my satchel to the door.

When that day comes, I will lose all contact with humanity. As the dining out experience or the concert experience, there is more than the person(s) you are with but the surrounding interaction of strangers who have become friends for the moment of sharing an experience.

For me, a trip to the Tummy Temple is more than just filling a wire basket with boxes and bottles. For me the Tummy Temple holds the human experience.

Some are impatient and frantic while others savor their moment in the florescent lights. Some days are circuses and others are walks in the park. I give credit to those assigned to control our patterns and listen to our grief and put up with our inappropriate behavior. Like any industry, and the Tummy Temple is an industry that keeps us fed, there are hundreds of details that go on behind the scenes that we don’t notice or appreciate. Does anyone pay attention to the holiday items that are constantly changing?

Still the Tummy Temple is a gathering place, so I wonder. Why don’t people get married there? They may have met over the yogurt aisle or maybe by the Kittles or the Captain Crunch for your grocery selection defines you better than any profile on social media. 

Tomorrow, if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be back to visit with my peeps, Toni providing my bunnies with blueberries, Allen suggesting my taste’s libation, Kandi and Brian picking up behind us and George, Wesley and redhead Katy making sure I get home with a smile and a chuckle.