A Thanksgiving Message: We’re Grateful for the Grocery, But Where is the Ench?

     Regular blog visitors, if any, will recognize this ‘un from previous postings.  I had been working on a vitriolic Radio-Free Robin on the Dade Board of Education’s book-bannin’ ways.  But I couldn’t get the tone just right – it’s hard to be amusin’ when you are talking about a war on books waged by people in charge of for crying out loud education!  Plus I thought maybe they’d reverse their decision at Monday night’s board meeting, and I’d have to say, “Never mind!”

     (Actually I went to the B of E meeting last night and the book banning was never even mentioned!  Despite the fact there has been nothing but media hype since I covered the ish Nov. 7 – the Times Free Press in Chattanooga picked it up and splashed their own story about it  across the front page of their Sunday edish, then they had an editorial about it the following Tuesday.  Most recently there were two letters in the Freep this Sunday as well as one last week in our rag. Anyway I wasted a couple of hours on our most tragically busy day of the week, leading me to create the adage:  “Some days you get the elephant in the room; some days the elephant in the room gets you.” )

     In any case, with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up I decided something light and cheerful was more appropriate nohow.  So I cobbled this together for this week’s print edition by adding a little new stuff to that piece about the Ench I had posted here as a Boblet back in maybe September.     

A Thanksgiving Message:  We’re Grateful for the Grocery, but Where is the Ench?

By Robin Ford Wallace

            When my friend Madelyn married her longtime boyfriend they did the thing quietly in a government

building.  But this was California, San Francisco in fact, so even the no-frills civil ceremony took on a certain

sparkle. 

Mad’s brother happened to be in town so they had the family element, and just when she started to wonder if they shouldn’t have added a religious component as well, who should march in but some Buddhist monks?  Perhaps they were applying for a permit of some kind, but this being San Francisco maybe they had just sensed from the air they were needed.

            Anyway I have digressed from my point, which is how happy my friend was.  In her email she wrote:  “And suddenly there we were, in San Francisco getting married, both of us grinning like idiots.”

            Years later another couple of friends got married, this time with a big sloppy wedding in a pasture so everybody could watch, and as the vows were spoken I could see the same uncontrollable happiness shining from the same moronic grins.  I was so happy for them I cried a little.

            But it was only this past September that I experienced that same unstoppable, uncontainable, stupid-making joy for myself.  I was so thrilled to be living in that particular minute in that particular place that I realized I, too, was grinning like an idiot.  I was exalted and exhilarated and ecstatic and –

            – walking into the Ingle’s Market, which had recently reopened after four months’ closure following the tornados.

            Did you think I was going to tell you about my own wedding?  That was roughly 100 years ago, and though I was of course very happy to have been vouchsafed a husband against all odds, what I remember about the Big Day is mostly social angst and bursting out of my (size 8) wedding dress during the reception.  I expect it was the canapés.

            Anyway, back to the Ingle’s.  It was the day after the torrential rains of Labor Day, which had turned the air so unseasonably cool you had to wear a jacket.  I had just trotted around Cloudland Canyon with my dogs for the first time since the summer got so hot.  The leaves had already turned color from the drought, so it was like finding the door into autumn.  I felt that I was living at the throbbing heart of the universe.

            Then on the way home, I was able – finally! – to pop into the Ingle’s at the foot of the mountain to pick up what I needed for supper.  During those months after the tornado I’d had to detour to one of the other grocery stores in town, and though I knew I was lucky not to have lost anything worse in the storm – my house, say, or someone I loved – the hole left where my pet grocery store was supposed to be was like a nagging sore that wouldn’t heal.

            Now, finally the lights were back on, the parking lot was repaved, and when I approached the doors swung wide automatically, opened either by an electric eye or friendly invisible servants – I should care which? – to welcome me back.  Ingle’s was open, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

            I’ll admit, the new self-checkout stations they put in during the renovation worried me a little at first.  I heard customers grumbling:  “They’re not opening the real registers to encourage us to use the self-checkouts.”

“What that encourages me to do is go back to Wal-Mart, hon.”

So I fretted a little, and made tentative plans for an Ingle’s grand opening follow-up article called “The Agony and the Ecstasy:  Is Dade Ready for the Challenge of Self-Checkout?”

            But that was a minor concern, one that was swept away in the tide of joy, welcome and store-brand ration-style dog food I had found no substitute for anywhere else.  It’s embarrassing to be so happy about a grocery store but I’m old enough by now to understand you take your happiness where you find it.  Plus did you see what they did with the produce department?

It don’t get no better than this, I thought.  And that’s when I noticed all was not perfect in paradise:  The “Ench” was gone!

There used to be a bench on the sidewalk beside the newspaper boxes.  Somebody must have sold advertising on it because it was festooned with the names of local businesses.  But somebody else had very carefully, very meticulously, removed the first letter of every word, so what you read was:  ENEVA’S ESTAURANT,  I think maybe OORE’S UNERAL OME, but the one I particularly remember was ONY AND ELLY EATHERS OOFING. 

I expect maybe my sense of humor is fairly basic but that always killed me.  I can remember dozens of time I’d stop by the Ingle’s on the way home from some awful meeting where somebody had hurt my feelings, or from some dreary day that had demonstrated to me the utter futility of going on, and I’d pass the “Ench” and see ONY AND ELLY EATHERS OOFING and practically pee myself all over again.  There is nothing like ONY AND ELLY EATHERS OOFING to cheer a girl up.

Am I the only one who misses it?  If not, I urge fellow concerned citizens to join me in persuading Ingle’s to BRING BACK THE ENCH!

As Thanksgiving approaches I realize how profoundly grateful I am for all I still have, my life, my loved ones, the friendly little town I live in, the raw almonds in Ingle’s new bulk goods section.  

But I would be ust a ittle appier f Ngle’s ould ive ack the Ench!

Robin Ford Wallace lives in Deerhead Cove where she plays quietly in the dirt, disturbing no one.

What About The Ench?

            When my friend Madelyn got married she wrote me the most wonderful email.  She'd married her longtime feller and they had done the thing quietly in a government building.  But this was California, San Francisco in fact, so even the no-frills civil ceremony took on a certain sparkle.  Mad’s brother happened to be in town and attended so they had the family element, and just when she had started to wonder if they shouldn’t have added a religious component of some kind as well, who should come in but some Buddhist monks?  Perhaps they were applying for a permit of some kind, but this being San Francisco maybe they had just sensed from the air that somebody needed them.

            Anyway I have digressed from my point, which is how happy she was.  She wrote something like:  “And suddenly there we were, in San Francisco getting married, both of us grinning like idiots.”

            Years later another couple of friends got married, this time with a big sloppy wedding in a pasture so everybody could watch, and as the vows were read I could see the same uncontrollable happiness shining from their faces – they were both of them grinning like idiots.  I was so pleased for them I cried a little.

            But it was only last night that I experienced that same unstoppable, uncontainable, stupid-making joy for myself.  I was so thrilled to be living in that particular minute in that particular place that I realized I was grinning like an idiot.  I was exalted and exhilarated and ecstatic and –

            – walking into the Ingle’s Market, which had been closed for four months after the tornado.

            All right.  There’s probably a little more to it than that.  It was the day after the torrential rains of Labor Day, which had turned the air so unseasonably cool you had to wear a jacket.  I had just trotted around Cloudland Canyon for the first time since the summer got so hot.  The leaves had already turned color and started falling from the drought, so it was like finding the door into autumn.

            I like summer and dislike winter, but I loved the pseudo-fall!  It hadn’t been cool enough to run since maybe June but now I was jogging along like the Russian Army, and the weather was so bracing even my 12-year hound dog – I usually leave her at home now for the long hikes – was able to keep up. 

            Then when I was through I was able – finally! – to pop into my pet grocery store at the foot of the mountain to pick up what we needed for supper.  It was one of those moments when, instead of wondering how on earth I ended up at the ass end of nowhere, I remember I’m living at the throbbing heart of the universe.

            Plus Ingle’s has added bulk goods in big clear containers like at Earth Fare, so you can buy raw almonds by the ounce …

            Anyway, it’s embarrassing to be so happy about a grocery store, but I’m old enough now to understand you take your happiness where you find it.  Here is a “Boblet” I wrote last Friday, after the Ingle’s had reopened on Wednesday.  

O FRABJOUS DAY!  But What About the Ench?

By Robin Ford Wallace

            I met a neighbor tonight in the Food Lion.  He had a basketful of groceries and I only had three items which I was carrying in my arms.  Gallantly, he insisted I go first.  I let him persuade me, put my three items on the counter, then practically threw myself on the floor and commenced to twitch and drool as I went into full-blown Apology Mode.

“I guess you’re wondering why I’m here,” I said.  He looked at me in amazement, wondering no such thing, but I had started now and couldn’t stop until I’d confessed to killing Kennedy.  “I mean,” I said, “I’m an Ingle’s loyalist, and now after all these months Ingle’s is open again and here I am at Food Lion.” 

He looked at me, stunned with boredom, but I rolled relentlessly on.  “See,” I said, “I was having dinner with my husband across the road and I remembered we needed these few things and I didn’t want to drive all the way down to Ingle’s and anyway I’ve already been in there earlier today.”

I was feeling guilty about being in the Food Lion because in Bob’s Little Acre I had keened so loud about missing Ingle’s after the tornado closed it down that the Ingle’s dietician from HQ in Asheville got to hear about it.  She left a message on the BLA blog saying not to lose hope, the store would reopen by the end of August.  That struck me as such joyous tidings that I put it on the front page of the Sentinel that week as a news brief. 

Then this week, with the store’s grand reopening on Wednesday, I made them let me in on Monday and I got the manager, Dewayne, to pose for a picture in front of one of the new self-checkout stations.  (I already have plans for a feature called “The Agony and the Ecstasy:  Dade Meets the Challenge of Self-Checkout.”) 

Anyway, I wrote a short news piece and when Ingle’s reopened on Wednesday our newspaper in its box by the store’s front door carried the headline that Ingle’s was reopening on Wednesday. 

If you are reading this in a big city somewhere and have started feeling embarrassed for me that the grocery store figures so large in my pathetically circumscribed life, please be assured that the rival newspaper in town carried the same headline.  Also let me point out that though I did begin the article by typing, “Excitement has mounted to fever pitch,” I made judicious use of the backspace key before hitting the Send button.         

But back to my neighbor and the Food Lion:  Finally, from the glassiness of the man’s eyes, I realized he might have spent the past few months paying attention to something – his job, his family, American Idol – besides my news and opinion writing about Ingle’s.  He didn’t care why I was in Food Lion.  So I took pity on him and began talking to him instead about the time I’d apologized to a woman I knew for having met her coming out of the Wal-Mart in Tiftonia. 

By that time he was just standing there like a pillar of salt, smiling here and there pleasantly though it could have been gas pains.  I think something in him had died.

Later, walking out to the parking lot, I realized I had apologized for something that needed no apology to somebody who didn’t want to be apologized to, and then I’d compounded the gaffe not only by apologizing for apologizing but by ranting on about past apologies. 

I’ve recently passed through a period of intense misery and in reaction undergone what in another person might have counted for a religious conversion.  I’ve tried to become warmer, less bitter and easier to get along with.  Putting my three items in the car and driving away, though, I realized I was just as slobbering a sociopath as ever.

And you know what?  I didn’t care!  It was Friday and I’d just had a good dinner and INGLE’S WAS FINALLY OPEN AGAIN.  Nothing, not even getting caught at Food Lion, not even an epiphany of my unworthiness to breathe air, could detract from my sheer joie de grocery store.  It was as if the last little hurt place from the tornado had finally healed over.  Ingle’s was open, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

            Which is when I remembered:  the bench.

Even though, four months after the tornado, the Sentinel in the paper box outside Ingle’s had finally been changed out from the April 27 edition that possibly nobody on earth read, to the Aug. 31 rag with the glad news detailed above, supposing you put two quarters in the box there was still no place to sit and read the glorious prose contained therein.  The bench was gone!  

            Not that I ever sat on the Ingle’s bench that much, but it was important to me.  Somebody must have been selling advertising on it because it was festooned with the names of local businesses.  But somebody else had very carefully, very meticulously, removed the first letter of every word, so what you read was:  ENEVA’S ESTAURANT,  I think maybe OORE’S UNERAL OME, but the one I particularly remember was ONY AND ELLY EATHERS’ OOFING. 

I expect maybe my sense of humor is fairly basic but that always just killed me.  I remember dozens and dozens of time I’d stop by the Ingle’s on the way home from some awful meeting where somebody had hurt my feelings, or from some dreary day that had demonstrated to me the utter futility of going on, and I’d see ONY AND ELLY EATHERS’ OOFING and practically pee myself all over again.  There is nothing like ONY AND ELLY EATHERS’ OOFING to cheer a girl up.

So that is my point in this Boblet:  All is NOT QUITE perfect in paradise.  Local residents, join with me in agitating Ingle’s to bring back the “ench.”

And out-of-towners, thank God you have omething etter to do.

END