Happiness and the price of groceries

I like Trader Joe’s because the clientele is half my age or less and I stand with my cart in a long double line with college kids and mothers of tiny children and I listen to fragments of phone conversations that are fresh and fascinating to me. These people lean toward eagerness and curiosity with a streak of satire; my people tend toward dismay and resignation. The lines move fast at Trader Joe’s because the store has 24 checkout cashiers and as I come toward checkout, this being New York, I wonder how many of the cashiers are hoping to be actors, writers, artists, dancers, composers, and I worry about them as I catch sight. I was a dishwasher when I was their age and I hoped to be published in The New Yorker where my heroes Updike, Perelman, Thurber published. For me, the magazine was the Big League and I needed to climb out of the Minors and when I made it, at 27, I bought filet mignon.The Bigs are still around but the young and ambitious have found new roads — podcasting, for example — in which you pitch your own tent and invent your brand and see who stops to look at the goods. I find this sort of astonishing and wonderful. I look at the young and see how their ambition is to make their own good and productive life rather than win the silver trophy or be admitted to the Big Shot Society.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
When I go to Trader Joe's on Columbus Avenue in
New York to buy groceries, I do it to buy
guy food, which my beloved cannot buy because she knows
it's not good for me. I don't do this secretly.
I come home in broad daylight, unpack the bag, and

(00:36):
she watches without comment. Sometimes in place of comment, she'll
tell about something she read in the New York Times
about some encouraging development and healthcare or public education. Meanwhile,
she watches me put away the frozen mac and cheese,

(01:00):
large potatoes for baking in the microwave, a few years
of sweet corn, a couple filet mignon, frozen lasagna, frozen meatballs,
frozen knockoff white castles, sliders. I don't buy greens because
that's her territory, along with other vegetables, coffee, olive oil, cereal, rice, condiments, etc.

(01:28):
With coffee, for example, she has a specific dark bean
from a particular valley in Guatemala that meets her standards. Me,
I'm happy with Maxwell House Instant coffee is coffee. She
favors Portuguese olive oil from hand harvested olives. Me, I'm

(01:53):
fine with Mazzola, I don't defend my choices, and thanks
to her. I love mac and cheese because I loved
grade school back in the nineteen fifties, and that's what
Mabel served in the Benson School cafeteria, and when I

(02:15):
eat a bowl of it now, I am back there,
sitting with boys and observing Krinne and Elaine and Diane
with great interest. As a teenager, I love to ride
my bike downtown to the Minneapolis Public Library, and I

(02:36):
got my lunch at the White Castle across the street.
Sliders fifteen cents apiece when I heat up a frozen one.
Today I'm fifteen years old again, enjoying independence, spending my
babysitting money reading Hemingway and Kafka and E. E. Cummings

(03:00):
and other books. My parents don't approve of. Trader Joe's
doesn't always stock radishes, but if I see them, I
buy a bunch because picking radishes was my first job
around the age of twelve, and I graduated from that

(03:21):
to potato picking and hoeing corn. I like Trader Joe's
because the clientele is half my age or less, and
I stand with my cart in a long double line
with college kids and mothers of tiny children, and I
listen to fragments of phone conversations that are fresh and

(03:46):
fascinating to me. These people lean toward eagerness and curiosity
with a streak of satire. My people tend toward dismay
and resignation. The lines move fast Trader Joe's because the

(04:07):
store has twenty four checkout cashiers, and as I come
towards check out, this being New York, I wonder how
many of the cashiers are hoping to be actors, writers, artists, dancers, composers,

(04:27):
and I worry about them as I catch sight of them.
I was a dishwasher when I was their age, and
I hope to be published in the New Yorker magazine.
Were my heroes John Updike, S. J. Pelman, James Therber
published for me the magazine was the big league, and

(04:51):
I needed to climb out of the miners. And when
I made it at the age of twenty seven, I
bought full The bigs are still around, but the young
and ambitious have found new roads. Podcasting, for example, in

(05:12):
which you pitch your own tent and invent your brand
and see who stops to look at the goods. I
find this sort of astonishing and wonderful. I look at
the young and see how their ambition is to make
their own good and productive life, rather than when the

(05:37):
silver trophy be admitted to the big shot society. My
beloved is fifteen years younger than I, and while I
sit and toil at my new novel, her ambition is
to walk six miles a day through the city and

(05:58):
see the sights. The foot challiced in the park, the
woman telling her dog to improve its attitude, the delight
of apartment children set free on the playground, and talk
to the French tourists taking photographs of squirrels. And the

(06:18):
guy with a sign writes you a poem five dollars.
I want my novel to win the National Book Award.
It won't, but that's what I want. She wants to
make a good life, and every day she does. I
come home with my autobiographical bag of groceries and she

(06:43):
makes no comment. Life circles back. I eat Mabel's macaroni
and I am once again curious about girls. I once
picked potatoes, and now I eat one with butter and
sour cream, and it is delicious, and I feel truly grateful,

(07:08):
just released a Prairie Home Companion's fiftieth Anniversary two CD set,
recorded live at the Fitzgerald Theater. Garrison Keeler and the
Gang celebrate with music, sketches, and of course, the news
from Lake Wobegon. Get to tales at Garrisonkeeler dot com