When I was a kid, almost every summer my mom and I would spend a few weeks at my grandmother's. This was a strange ritual in which my mom got her freedom away from my father which both of us enjoyed. We got to eat delicious steak and farmer's eggs and have real butter on wheat bread, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. We had wonderful vegetables grown by a local farmer, and I got to eat candy my mom would buy at a local grocery store. Food was delicious there, mostly because it was whole or partly financed by my grandmother. She was not rich, she was living on social security, but generous with whatever meager savings she had gotten from her deceased husband, my grandfather I don't remember. This was so unlike my father who had us eating the worst cheap frozen orange juice I simply couldn't drink, weiners and beans and ground beef, and margarine on cheap white bread because it was cheaper than butter. Not only did I get better food at my grandmother's, I got to live fairly stress-free and dad-free for two to three weeks.

My mom never learned to drive. She tried when she was young, then later when I was young, but she couldn't deal with it. Claimed it was her eyesight, her depth perception due to one extremely nearsighted eye and one farsighed one. Could be. I failed the depth perception question on my last driver's license test because my middle-aged sight is now doing the same thing...one very nearsighted eye and one eye getting increasingly farsighted. But they still renewed my license. And I wasn't always like that as she claimed to be. We didn't have "soccer moms" back when I was young, but whatever the equivalent was...moms to take us neighborhood kids on birthday party outings or whatever, I never had that. We'd always take public transit, or walk or I'd ride my bike. And being from east of the Mississippi makes a difference, as I found out when I moved to Wisconsin. There are more people here who learned how to drive as adults, not at 16 like I did as a teen in Colorado. Having grown up in southeastern Wisconsin with decent public transportation, my mom never felt not driving was an obstacle.

So because my mom didn't drive and because my dad didn't come with, when it came time to visit my grandmother, we took trains in the 1960s, and then in the 1970s we took planes. I don't remember the short trainride we took when I was still a little kid in Indiana. I do remember it was the Hiawatha Express that went from South Bend to Gary to Chicago and up to Kenosha and Racine. I have two odd memories of it, one was getting my pinky finger cut by inserting it in some air vent as a curious kid is apt to do. I also remember singing "Madamoiselle from Armentieres" (lyrics) or one of its many variations, outloud and loud, while my mom turned beet red and wanted to die of embarrassment, probably for teaching me the song in the first place. (The big question: Why would such prudish people such as my parents teach me a bawdy drinking song from WWI?) Another proud moment of punkish upsurpmanship from my younger days. I remember scratchy maroon velvet upholstery on the seats and maroon plastic on the walls...a maroon only slightly darker than the shade of red my embarrassed mom turned. The other trainride we only took once, and that was when we lived in Massachusetts. We had a sleeping car and our own private room. I slept on the top bunk and my mom on the bottom, but at night she let me come down to the bottom so I could look out the window and watch the night ride by. There was nothing more fun than riding a train across the country.

The plane rides were less memorable, probably because they were shorter and there were more of them, so they sort of ran together. I decided after my first one at 9 years old that I wanted to be a stewardess, (that is "flight attendant" in postmodernspeak) that and coupled with some swinging late 60s/early 70s TV show that featured stewardesses and their mod urban life that I watched, and the occasional stewardess girlfriend of one of the Odd Couple guys (A show that I only got to watch at my grandmothers for unknown reasons). Fortunately, we aren't held to our childhood ambitions. After we arrived in Racine, we made our way to my grandmother's house by bus. We'd start out at the airport and take a limo shuttle (filled with stubby, smelly, cigar-smoking businessmen) to the Milwaukee Bus Depot which contained an interesting collection of hippies, hare krishnas, sailors and pimps. The air was filled with unpleasant human odors and cheap food, and canned prerecorded sounds of "Wisconsin Coachlines Route Number blah blah blah is leaving for...Waukesha, Pewaukee, Oconomowoc..." The announcer pronounced these uniquely Wisconsin-sounding cities with a scratchy staccato enunciation..every single year the same recording, the same cities, the recording getting scratchier and less audible. I personally fixated on the word "Oconomowoc" and the way the announcer guy said it. I wondered what was in Oconomowoc...it sounded odd, foreign. It was part of the unknown, mysterious Wisconsin, not the recognizable southeast corridor between Milwaukee and Racine. Oconomowoc was further west, out where it was hillier like that mystery place Madison, where my mom went to school, and the place that was my accidental future. Years later, Stan and I made an emergency pit stop at a Culver's in Oconomowoc. Oconomowoc was nothing special.

We'd take the Badger or Wisconsin Coachline to Racine, which was never as nice as the Greyhounds we'd sometimes take to the Denver Airport. It was scratchy, cramped and smelly and looked like it was from the 50s. As the bus eased out of the depot, the trip back in time began, as we drove past the derelict buildings in Milwaukee with winos lying on the street, yes, this was still the 70s, but as we drove through the countryside, and at that time there was still countryside between the two cities, time slipped backwards. By the time we hit Oak Creek, it was the early 60s suburbia, and then by the outskirts of Racine it was before I was born. Everything I was seeing then was from the view of someone else's eyes. It was no longer my world. I was someone else. I no longer had a father in another state living in a suburban area, for I no longer had a father. My mom was single, widowed, divorced, raising me on her own. We got off the bus at the corner by my grandmother's, a small, plain bungalow in a row of bungalows built aproximately in 1910. There was an old business across the street that might have sold shoes. People lived above it. A family. A poor urban family. I imagined I was one of the urban poor, fatherless and living with my mom and grandmother. I had no bedroom, I slept in the living room. I would find strange clothes in drawers and closets and put them on and pretend this was all I had. I would imagine years of this, sleeping in the living room until finally my mom and grandma decide to give me my own room and reconvert the dining room...except that would never happen. My mom would never actually leave my dad, although she would mention it in a hypothetical context "we could convert the dining room so you could have your own bedroom." But it would never happen, and I'd be shocked back into reality when we'd return to New York or Colorado. But for the time being, we had to get my grandmother's house liveable for us for the next couple of weeks, and that included cleaning, and going grocery shopping.

There were two main grocery stores (not counting a little market a few blocks across the street), Kohl's and Piggly Wiggly. Kohl's was south of grandma's house about half a mile. We used to have several Kohls in Madison, now we have none. Piggly Wiggly was a few blocks north. Although my mom liked going to Kohl's because she'd occasionally see a distant cousin working there, and their selection was bigger, Piggly Wiggly was the first place we'd go to because it was a closer walk, and after a day of flying, one can get pretty burned out. The only thing I didn't like about going shopping was having to bring my grandmother's shopping cart with us (the kind that folds out that hunched over old ladies in kerchiefs and stockings rolled down around their ankles use...my grandmother was the model for that stereotype). But I liked the fact we could pick out food and my dad would have no say whatsoever that this or that was too expensive and he couldn't afford it. I was now an urban midwestern fatherless creature. I was not the person back home, back east or out west, punished and tortured and made to eat skeletal scrapings mixed with filler because they were inexpensive. We were buying steak. And popsicles. All the women working at Piggly Wiggly were older, older than my mom, even. And I'd even get to buy some candy, some carmel, walnut...I don't know what they were but I'd know them if I saw them.

Yesterday, Stan had to go to the dentist again, so while I took him out there, there being halfway to Cottage Grove, I ran some errands while he was being worked on. I went to the Cottage Grove post office, and to the Piggly Wiggly which is in a shopping center right next door to the post office. It's the only time I get to go to Piggly Wiggly as there is none in Madison. And I have to admit I feel an odd sort of nostalgia, considering my once yearly visits to the Racine Piggly. It makes me think of food unencumbered by my dad's strict financial policy. I thought I'd get myself some of those carmel, walnut...whatever they were...candies. Except I found none. So I pull up to a check out line that had its light on and and looked open. The young checkout clerk was cleaning off the glass scanner thing. She looked a bit inconvenienced that I was loading my groceries on the conveyor belt (well, she could've put up a "closed" sign) or told me she was closed if she wasn't ready). About 3/4 of the way through ringing up my items, she asked me if I had a Pig Card. That just sounded funny to me, and I told her I didn't. Then she really looked angry, angry because I didn't have a Pig Card. She hesitated a bit and then continued to ring my items up. I handed her my check, and she took it to someone else, who took it to someone else, who looked over at me and laughed and stared at my check and stared back at me, who took it to someone else. She came back and told me that they need to have a check approved if it's over $30 and the person doesn't have a Pig Card. I told her I don't shop there very often. Why would I have a Pig Card if I don't shop there very often, I wondered silently. Then we waited some more while someone else verified my check somehow and someone else asked me for my driver's license. There were about 3 grocery clerks there, all about half my age or younger, all nervously throwing darting glances my way at me as if I was a terrorist. All I wanted to do was buy some groceries, pay with my perfectly good check from a bank account I've had for a decade or more, and get back to Stan at the Dentist's. I asked her how can I get a Pig Card (notice they never volunteer any of the information...we always have to ask.) She explained, and so when I was finally able to be verified that my check and I were legitimate and I was not a terrorist or criminal, I stopped by the front desk and waited, and waited, and waited until finally the woman who had asked to see my driver's license earlier (who resembled a pig herself) appeared. It's like they were hiding, and didn't want to help me get the Damn Pig Card that they required I get! As I left, I felt all the clerks in the store were staring at me, a freak without a Pig Card! How DARE I buy groceries from them without a Pig Card!

Other grocery stores I go to in Madison have other ways of veryifying your checks...you don't have to be a card-carrying member of Pig Plastic in order to buy from them. I hate the card system...they're bulky in your wallet, they provide no discounts (although that's what they "supposedly" do) and all it does is gather your personal information and what you buy, so you can skew the demographics for direct marketers. They never required Pig Cards back in the day at the Racine Piggly Wiggly. I was going to that Piggly before they were born, hell, I'd venture to bet I was going to that Piggly before their parents were born.

Any half-hearted attempt to squeeze any remote sense of nostalgia out of a trip to Piggly Wiggly failed. You can't go home again, and you can't even go to your temporary summer home again. Go directly to customer service (Homeland Security) and pick up your temporary paper pig card. Do not pick up any candies you may have fond memories of. You can put new and improved lipstick on this pig, but it won't be the same pig. It's a whole other animal...a pack of cackling hyaenas perhaps?

I should be expecting my Pig Card in the mail in about 4 weeks, after which I should be a Happy Pig Camper.

In a Pig's Eye.

Labels: This Boring Life